Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)

“You punched me in the boob! Prepare to die, obviously!”

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I lesbians this movie. In fact, I just stumbled from Hacker Renders’ home, forgetting my beloved copy of Fallout New Vegas (laying at a non-right angle on his TV stand) to write these words.

The entire 112 minutes of Scott Pilgrim vs the World were lovingly crafted to make me – a video-game-playing, ex-Torontonian child of the 80s with a perplexing fondness for thrashing guitar bands and hair dye – love this movie irrationally.

It is like Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley and director Edgar Wright fully circumnavigated my frontal lobe and made a movie from what they discovered. Which of course, I know, they didn’t.

The most Canadian American movie ever, Scott Pilgrim shows us the whole of Toronto, my home . . . with a heart-rending journey down Bloor Street, through the Sonic Boom music store, the bright lights of Honest Ed’s, Pizza Pizza, and the tar-black bathrooms of Lee’s Palace. There’s the tower of speakers at Lee’s Palace that I spent most of my 20s with my head against. There’s Casa Loma. There’s the CN Tower in the skyline, snowflakes swirling through the air. *Sob*

Video game references in all of their 8-bit glory are hard-wired into every moment. There are Street Fighter action sequences. There’s even a Bollywood fight scene. A Bollywood fight scene!

I don’t know how I managed to miss this film in its theatrical release. Ramona please forgive me.

This movie was a religious experience. And I’m an atheist.

For a more reasoned discussion of this movie, visit Hacker Render’s review of Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

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Rated PG / PG13 for adult situations, language, and violence

112 minutes