Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the most comic book-y comic book movie I’ve ever seen. Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) uses every trick in the book to make the screen come alive with BOOM! POW! WHAM! awesomeness.
Few moments in film this year have packed the exhilarating punch of the scenes where bassist Scott Pilgrim and his band mates tear into some garage band grunge and the room literally quivers with visible electricity.
Wright is working with an audio-visual palette that feels brand-new and award-worthy. It’s not often I watch a film that seems like the first of its kind, but this one does.
Unfortunately, the story Wright is telling is less praiseworthy. Scott Pilgrim (played with deadpan hilarity by Michael Cera, who can do deadpan hilarity in his sleep but has yet to prove he can do anything else) has fallen for a new girl in town named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). But to win her heart, he must first defeat her seven evil exes.
This is intended, I suppose, as a metaphor for a number of things, but primarily it is an excuse for the film to morph into a stylized combat video game every ten minutes or so.
All of this is handled well enough, but I never really cared if Scott wound up with his intended. I found myself sympathizing more with Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), the high school girl Scott dumps after meeting Ramona. It’s never good when a romantic comedy loses the audience’s rooting interest in the main couple.
But if Scott Pilgrim fails as a romance, it definitely succeeds as a comedy. Cera delivers the zingers in his trademark style and Wright has surrounded him with a stellar supporting cast, including Jason Schwartzman and recent Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick.
The best of them is Kieran Culkin as Wallace, Scott’s gay roommate. He steals the film with his sarcastic asides. And Brandon Routh, deadly dull as Superman, proves to be a fine comic actor, portraying one of Ramona’s exes, a white-haired hunk who draws his power from his obnoxious veganism.
Scott Pilgrim is jam-packed with so many hilarious and inventive moments that it’s a shame it all amounts to so little. Ultimately it feels a lot like one of the video games it so successfully emulates — entertaining as hell while you’re in the middle of it but forgotten the minute your quarter runs out.
Meet Me In Montauk 
I agree with everything you say. In fact, in order for the film to have more gravity, the figurative elements of the story needed to be explored. There is no reason why this film couldn’t have looked amazing and new but still mined more emotionally resonant ground. Hell, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did exactly that and remains perhaps my very favorite film because of it.
Instead, we’re left believing that each evil ex is just that – some nut job emerging to give Scott Pilgrim a hard time before he can enjoy his new relationship. Sure, it’s amusing, but it’s not much more than that. Had each ex represented something Scott needed to face in order to be able to have a successful relationship – and, as Clay points out, had we actually cared that his relationship with Ramona ultimately be successful – then this might have been a special movie.
As it is, my 25 cents cost 9 dollars, and the entertainment value was about the same.