Mini movie review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), is the mostly live action adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's beloved graphic novels, in which Scott Pilgrim, a 23 year old Toronto slacker, must do battle with hipster girl Ramona Flowers's seven evil exes in order to win her love.  I bought the books but have only read them once: they're very funny and hip and clever, inundated with Canadian 20-something hipster culture, plus local bands, plus video games.  Scott is cute and charming but really juvenile and thoughtless; Ramona is sometimes cruel; and the secondary characters are often more pleasant to be around than the main characters.

I thought the movie did a very good job of translating the books.  Michael Cera as Scott is self-centered and clueless, but also sweet (although the actor is growing out of his cute boyish looks and entering a more awkward phase).  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is pretty good as Ramona, I guess, but I'm not sure she's that good an actress.  Ellen Wong, playing Knives Chau, and Kieran Culkin, as Scott's gay roommate Wallace, steal every scene they're in.  And the line-up of Ramona's seven evil exes was well-cast (Chris Evans! Jason Schwartzman! Mae Whitman!), although Brandon Routh does nothing for me.

I enjoyed the videogame battles between Scott and the exes, something that seems so natural in the books - I do imagine that people who saw the movie without having read the books were like, WTF is going on?  My thoughts here are a little incoherent since I saw the movie a couple of days ago and things are slipping away from me, sorry.  But I had a lot of fun watching SPvtW: it's not deep, but it's pretty and interesting and fun, and pays a nice homage to the source material.  Ain't nothin' at all wrong with that.