Solo Round!- SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one of a number of films I've seen in 2010 that were just so incredible that they left me struggling to articulate my thoughts for a good while afterwards. I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I didn't overcome this silent appreciation of the film and get right on reviewing for you folks.

Scrounging douchebag Scott Pilgrim is our anti-hero, living off of the same flat (and indeed, mattress) as his gay roommate and trying to win the adoration of his peers as the bass player in a garage band called Sex Bob-Omb. He becomes infatuated with one Ramona Flowers, and provokes the wrath of a league made up of her super-powered Evil-Exes. Ready? FIGHT!

For the second time in a year, after Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, we have here a film that's destined to become a cult classic. It's not to say it won't garner critical praise and fan appreciation at the time of its release (because it's already done that), but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a Hollywood film so fresh and exciting and left-of-centre that you wonder why everyone isn't going to see it.

The answer to that is clear- for all of its brilliance and insight, it's not a film for everyone. The use of video game and comic book vocabulary to convey the romantic angst of a certain age puts it squarely below the sights of many mainstream critics, who've tended to review the audience rather than the film. It's a film that deploys sound effects from The Legend of Zelda, and where characters burst into fight scenes as regularly as your High School Musical-starring teens will burst into song.

Moreover, our protagonist is a somewhat nebbish anti-hero, who's difficult to empathise with for a large portion of the film. As if director Edgar Wright didn't have enough to do trying to turn Michael Cera into an action hero. As Scott Pilgrim though, that same performance we always see him do gains something a little different. If the only reason you're not seeing this is because you don't like Cera, that will actually help your enjoyment of the film, even if you might find difficulty in following Scott's getting over himself and evolution into a better person. Through fighting!

And man, the fighting is awesome. I've complained about so many action films this summer that the fights are shot too close, in poor lighting, and so it's difficult to tell what's going on. The fights here are nothing short of amazing, excellently choreographed to mirror the button-mashing pursuits of Street Fighter and the like, with all the onomatopoeic debris of the 60s Batman series. It helps that we have such great comedy turns in some of Scott's opponents too, particularly Chris Evans' action star parody, Brandon Routh's psychic vegan and Mae Whitman's "bi-furious" ninja girl.

At its heart, it's a romantic comedy, but many I've spoken to don't get why Scott has to fight the Evil Exes for Ramona anyway. Surprisingly, most of these people are male, who I would have expected to understand better than the female audience, to be frank. I don't know about you, but I've known a Ramona. A girl so world-weary and jaded, and yet so unattainable that you can't think about anyone else. She's wrong for you, and those who've been with her say the same. Bryan Lee O'Malley's comics, and now Wright's film, externalise a geek's unrequited love (everyone's had one) and the jealousy and rivalry a bloke feels when he realises he's not the first who's ever gone after a Ramona.

Sometimes you encounter boyfriends or girlfriends in real life who make it so difficult for their ex that it's impossible to start a new relationship. These ones in the film control Ramona's love-life by duelling any new prospects to the death, and the only way someone of Scott's youth and experience can process this is through fantasy. Anyone who's ever picked up a console controller has imagined experiencing video game physics in real life, and in properly fighting for a woman instead of expecting her to sit idly by and watch his crap band, he realises that in hilarious fashion.

If sentimental rationale isn't enough, be assured that Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes Ramona a living and breathing entity, instead of some princess who has to be rescued from giant barrel-chucking monkeys every week. In looks, she's got the big anime eyes that her comic counterpart has, but she has the acting chops too. Hell, all of the performances were great here- Jason Schwartzmann makes for a very interesting boss level, Kieran Culkin is one of the comic highlights of the film as the aforementioned snarky gay roommate Wallace, and Ellen Wong gives a performance that occasionally verges on heartbreaking as Scott's tragically obsessed fangirl Knives Chau.

Before all of this business, I can't avoid the fact that the first half hour, before Ramona properly makes her entrance, is kind of slow. It's easy to see how those who have doubts could enter the film and wonder what rubbish they've got themselves into for a good chunk of the first act. Maybe on repeat viewings, it'll drag less. Perhaps it's as essential to the astonishing visuals that follow as the black and white overture was to The Wizard of Oz. Or maybe we just need to get to know these characters properly before all becomes astonishing and vibrant.

That's really the only nit to pick though, because Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is just wonderful. Its tendency to liberally burst into excellent action sequences makes it visually distinctive from virtually everything else in the cinema at the moment, and it's got a heart of gold too. The cast has a real camaraderie, plunging some of the group dynamics of something like Ferris Bueller's Day Off into the middle of Kill Bill, or to draw from a video game, No More Heroes.

If anything, you kind of wonder why video game adaptations were never as ballsy as to loyally translate the medium's visual style to the big screen. Why is the first film in which defeated enemies explode into coins an adaptation from a comic book? It just sucks to be those other films really, as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a near flawless victory, pleasing action fans and resonating with troubled young lovers at the same time, and all the while having enough fun that you'll want to revisit it within hours of leaving the cinema.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If and when you see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? If you can help me when McG plunges through my ceiling and challenges me to a duel with seven Evil Hacks who don't like my reviews, flaming sword donations will be very appreciated.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Ménage à François

When the news is banal, it's always best to slip into the cinema. As the nation works itself into a lather over where the England football captain's been dipping his wick, Clint Eastwood marries the sport movie with the political biopic in Invictus, the story of the relationship between Nelson Mandela and rugby captain François Pienaar. And if sports and politics aren't for you, another more weedy and pencil-moustached François is available in Michael Cera comedy Youth in Revolt. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Invictus finds Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela as he leaves Robben Island prison and becomes President of South Africa. However, the film's focus is much larger. Although apartheid has been abolished, inter-racial tensions are at boiling point. The white South Africans now fear that the black South Africans will treat them with the same contempt they dished out themselves in the years previous. The blacks seem all too happy to meet their expectations, orchestrating a vote to ban the team's largely white rugby team, the Sprinboks. With South Africa due to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela liaises with the Springboks' captain, François Pienaar, played by Matt Damon, in a plan to unite the country by winning the tournament.

Clint Eastwood may never stop. I'm being serious, we need to get some scientists in to project whether or not his career in film will be the first true instance of perpetual motion. At the age of 79, he directs two films a year, which are, almost without exception, distinctive from anything else he's done before. He also acts in some of them, and that the only film he worked on in 2009 turned out to be this year's Invictus is no sign that he's slowing down. Because as with all of his films, it's tremendous. It passes the acid test for all sports films by being more about the story than about whether or not the sports team win, which they usually do. Having no interest in professional sport whatsoever, I still found the film to be irresistibly immersive. Incidentally, Eastwood also swerves the trap that befalls most by biopics- trying to penetrate the psyche of their subject by telling the story of their entire life while also telling the audience what to make of them.

In the pivotal role of Mandela, Eastwood's long-time collaborator Morgan Freeman is really nothing less than brilliant as usual. Instead of spoon-feeding an explanation to their audience, the director and the actor both dally with the personal problems between Mandela and his family, without enlarging them to dominate the film's story. Eastwood has picked the period and the subject for his story, and the film is constrained to the progression of that story rather than anciliary parts of Mandela's life, or Pienaar's. In the latter role, Matt Damon continues to flout the hilarious but unfair portrayal of his acting in Team America, although I wasn't entirely sure about that South African accent. Then again, my frame of reference is Sharlto Copley screeching about "fokkin creatures" in District 9, and I enjoyed Damon's performance on the whole. I'm not sure it's Oscar-worthy, but part of me wonders if that's just the Academy making up for its ignorance elsewhere.

Invictus was hardly snubbed in the Oscar ballots like Gran Torino was last year, and received acting nominations for both Freeman and Damon. I personally don't see any problem with nominating Eastwood for both best director and best picture every year, because he invariably does make the best films. That he's made a film about rugby, a sport largely cannibalised Stateside to become American football, speaks volumes for the scope of his vision. The Blind Side got the Best Picture nomination instead, and I'll be reviewing that when it comes out, but I doubt it's a coincidence that the American football film won out over the rugby film. It's hardly an obscure sport of course, but on a much larger scale, this is a film about overcoming inequality. It may be overly reverent in parts, but Mandela has had an inspiring life. Another tremendous effort from Clint Eastwood.

While Eastwood continues to crank out brilliant film after brilliant film and remain distinct, the much younger Michael Cera is shaking off his typecasting in Youth in Revolt. Nick Twisp is a gawky and awkward young man who doesn't get much luck with the ladies... er, wait a minute. No, he does break that typical Cera role, because after being driven to distraction by his incompetence with Sheeni, the girl of his dreams, he creates a supplementary persona called François Dillinger, also played by Cera. Chaos ensues, as his juvenile delinquency sends him on the run for blowing up half his hometown, all the while trying to win Sheeni's heart.

This film has, for reasons I'm not certain of, been languishing on a shelf for well over a year now, apparently. Now that it's finally found release, its unconventional romance seems less innovative in the wake of last year's (500) Days of Summer. It could have pre-empted it, but instead, it's finally being released after that film proved a hit with audiences and critics, and after Zach Galifianakis, who appears in this briefly, had a huge hit with The Hangover. But in the company of other fare from that genre, I'm not entirely sure Youth in Revolt counts as a romcom- it's really more of an outright comedy, contrary to what the marketing has depicted. The central conceit that you should change everything about yourself in order to attract an otherwise uninterested partner actually seems like it belongs in a much lazier film that this.

It is played mostly for laughs though, with the cooler François spouting suave one-liners like "I'm gonna tickle your belly button... from the inside" like a nebbish Tyler Durden, in contrast with Cera's more mild-mannered screen persona that we all know and were frankly getting a bit sick of. To be fair, I like him as an actor, and he proves here that he's very good when he has a similarly sound script to work from. The real discovery here is Portia Doubleday as Sheeni, who makes the role convincing. She's pretty, but not the traditional porcelain perfect look that some other films have been known to cast as similarly desirable characters. But her acting sells Sheeni as a character for whom Nick/François would go to such extreme lengths. A talented supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi and Fred Willard, but loses points for engaging Ray Liotta to play the exact same character he always does. He just screams asshole in the same way as you immediately know Danny Huston in a suit is the baddy in Edge of Darkness (still playing in cinemas, folks!).

There aren't really many belly laughs in Youth in Revolt, but then it's not Airplane! The humour exists alongside a well executed adaptation of the book it's based on, and it boasts the best performance by Michael Cera since Juno. Admittedly, that wasn't long ago, but some of the dreck he's sleep-walked through since made this a relieving watch. It may be only infrequently hilarious, but that's better than consistently smirkworthy. Laughometer semantics aside, this will be adored by fans of Cera, and this will hopefully find a decent audience after taking so long to make it to cinemas. Having attended a practically sold out screening myself, it looks to be doing alright for itself.

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If you've been to see Invictus or Youth in Revolt, why not share your comments below? Next time will most likely cover Disney's return to 2D animation, The Princess and the Frog, and the much acclaimed and Oscar-nominated crime drama, A Prophet. Never let it be said there's no variety on this here blog.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Final Reel: Historically Challenged

Yup, this is the last time you'll see these blog posts headed with the admittedly not-very-good pun "The Reel Deal". That ship has sailed, and it's time for a rebrand, the theme of which has already been glimpsed in my Transformers 2 review. But for now, I'm going to review two films set around about the same time period, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Year One, both of which would come under rather intense scrutiny from any Oxbridge scholar looking into their historical accuracy. But then I suppose most Oxbridge scholars know that animals don't speak English, and so films are usually exempt from such quibbles. Let's just say Ridley Scott clearly never worked on either of these films.

Reviews, as ever, shall contain minor spoilers, but not so far as to ruin your enjoyment of the films in question if you haven't seen them yet.

ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS


Who's in it? It's a cartoon of course, so we get the returning voice talents of John Leguizamo, Ray Romano and Denis Leary from the first two and a new voice in the form of the excellent Simon Pegg.

What's it all about? Sid the sloth (Leguizamo) is getting broody as his herd moves on in life- Manny (Romano) is soon to become a father and Diego (Leary) is off to regain his self-esteem as a predator. He steals three eggs he finds embedded in the ice with the aim of mothering them, but discovers they belong to a dinosaur, who aren't as extinct as first thought.

Any good? I've been groaning for months at the mention of this film. I love the first Ice Age, but felt the second was a step too far. The only really accomplished studio when it comes to animated sequels is Pixar, and Ice Age: The Meltdown did nothing to change this. But most of all, that title. "Dawn of the Dinosaurs?!", I wailed. "Dawn of-- the Ice Age came after the dinosaurs! What's wrong with cinema today? I-- hey, where did all my friends go?" Having coaxed one of my startled companions back to the cinema, I went in with some trepidation. I expected little more than the first sequel, but this time in 3D. The continually irksome glasses aside, this film actually wasn't that bad.

It's certainly not comedic genius. The first film was really good, in my opinion- it seemed to show promising things from the then-new studio Blue Sky, and it's one of the better animated films of the last decade or so. This instalment doesn't measure up to that but it's certainly a lot better than its immediate predecessor, even if it does reprise the most annoying of the new characters from that film. For starters, they took the dinosaur thing in a direction I certainly wouldn't have thought they'd manage. Rather than just have dinosaurs wander around all this time, it emerges that they're hiding under the ice, a la Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. In aping that it's obviously not massively original, but it displays more thought than I anticipated. As far as plot goes, it's much the same as the previous two- the makeshift herd that comprises the main characters go on a trek to recover/deliver one of their friends to safety.

Nevertheless, it supersedes the second film because it's funnier, plain and simple. Yes, it's still not as clever in its humour as Ice Age, but makes up for it with copious amounts of Simon Pegg. Buck is a debonair weasel who guides our heroes through the underground world with more than an implied degree of madness, and Pegg voices him with great aplomb. The film is still a little too reliant on the continuing frustrations of Scratt, the acorn-hungry squirrel, who this time gets a female counterpart, imaginatively called Scratte. This brings nothing to the film that we haven't seen in the assorted Scrat appearances to date, but there's a genius interlude towards the end to the tune of "Alone Again Naturally" with its lyrics retooled from the acorn's point of view. I shit you not. More annoying and unfunny are the possums, Crash and Eddie, demonstrating Hollywood's continuing inability to create twin comic-relief characters that don't make me want to hurt myself and those around me.

As with several 3D animated films, the 3D doesn't really lend anything to Ice Age- Dawn of the Dinosaurs, but it's an inoffensive and mildly enjoyable addition to the series. There are too few big laughs for it to measure up to the original, but it's well-animated and Simon Pegg is the most enjoyable aspect.



YEAR ONE


Who's in it? Jack Black (Tropic Thunder), Michael Cera (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) and David Cross (Kung Fu Panda).

What's it all about? A hunter-gatherer team (Black and Cera) are expelled from their tribe right before it is invaded and enslaved by soldiers from the city of Sodom. The pair ineptly careen from biblical event to biblical event in an attempt to rescue the tribe.

Any good? Big budget comedies don't work. Perhaps I'm being absent-minded, but besides Tropic Thunder, I can't think of a single big-budget comedy from recent years that left any lasting impression. Jack Black was in Tropic Thunder, and yet here, he's doing a film that largely flounders. I did laugh occasionally, but not enough to call this a good comedy. I should say from the outset that I can't really criticise the film for not particularly sticking to the setting of its title like other reviewers have, because I'm an atheist and this is essentially based on the Old Testament- I already think its source material was a confused mess of mumbo-jumbo. Coming soon, Mark Harrison reviews the Bible, but now we're looking at this, which apparently aims to be a modern day version of Life of Brian. I hesitate to say that this is more like Epic Movie than Life of Brian, because as mentioned, I did laugh at Year One. Sadly it is closer to the works of Aaron Friedburg and Jason Seltzer than... who directed this? Harold Ramis?!

Harold Ramis, what are you doing? You directed Groundhog Day! To a lesser extent, you directed Analyse This! You're a fucking Ghostbuster! Where did you go so wrong with this? Just to put this in perspective for those of you who are scratching your head at the mention of Sodom in the synopsis, Harold Ramis has made a film where the heroes are out to save the city of Sodom- you know, the one God struck down and which later gave its name to practises inventively explored in Brüno- from slavery. Not that I'm anti-gay, but I didn't like the confused message they were trying to get across about Sodom. Jack Black rambunctiously says he doesn't see the bad thing about Sodom- are they saying standards have slipped in the last 2000 years? It only gets more garbled with an out-of-place subplot about the existence of God, and you suddenly realise that every good comedy in the last few years (with the exception of Tropic Thunder) has remained more or less rooted in the real world. Surreal historical comedy is more or less a dead genre, until the Python crew revisit it, and that's incredibly unlikely.

As for the cast, their roles are overwhelmingly limited to separate Bits, a la last month's Night at the Museum 2. Paul Rudd has a Bit, Hank Azaria has a Bit and Ramis himself has his own little Bit. And in the centre of the film we have Jack Black and Michael Cera, and you'll never believe what they do. Jack Black is rambunctious (hence the use of the word in the last paragraph) and outrageous, while Michael Cera is awkward and shy. You know, the kind of performances those actors have never ever given before. Although I like Cera usually, both his and Black's tried-and-tested approaches are wearing thin, and you wish Azaria, Rudd and Ramis- all much more gifted comic actors- had been around more. Instead, their roles are cameos that cast little bits of light on Year One, a film that is otherwise largely disappointing and utterly forgettable.



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Right, that's pretty much is for now. The next post is coming very soon and will cover one film all to itself- some little film called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That revamp is on the way, and will definitely be in place by the time we get to the next of these two-review-blogs, but you can expect that the Harry Potter review will have some artwork from Fearn Sobers eventually, if not at the time the review is first posted.

Until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch,
Mark