Scott Pilgrim versus the World is a Canadian romantic comedy and musical based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic book.
Scott Pilgrim is a 22y.o teenage-looking insecure guy and guitarist who plays in a rock band called "Sex Bom-omb" going out with a high-school Chinese girl called Knives. He seems content with his life until he dreams about a girl, and she appears in his real world: Ramona, a funky American girl just moved to Toronto. Scott is over the moon, but he has to face his own personal demons, break up with sweet Knives and fight for Ramona's love against her seven exes.
Scott Pilgrim is one of the most refreshing teen-college movies produced in the last years, and one the best movies of 2010. The movie is cute, funny, entertaining, has great characters, a terrific soundtrack and stunning visuals. The story is presented as it was a video-game in which the main characters are the players, and their lives part of the game.
The movie focus on how difficult is to make a relationship work when you fall in love whit a girl with lots of emotional baggage and you are not an over-confident guy, while your dream girl is über-cool, and her exes were brilliant guys. Scott's fights against Ramona's exes are just a metaphoric way of putting it. The issues regarding
relationships are masqueraded by the video-game approach, but they have
depth. Unlike many other movies focusing on the emotional challenges of
very young people, sex is not the focus, although it is not avoided
either.The fights with the
exes are extremely funny and witty. I especially liked the fight with
the Vegan ex-boyfriend, which is hilarious. Also visually stunning is
the musical competition between Scott's rock band and the techno Asian
twins’ band.
All the actors are great in their roles: Michael Cera as Scott, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona, Ellen Wong as Knives; Kieran Culkin as Scott's confident gay Wallace, Anna Kendrick as the know-it-all Scott's sister Stacey, Jason Schwartzman as the revolting Gideon Graves, and Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons and Alison Pill as Scott's band members. However, Cera shines in this movie, in part because his physique really suits the personality of the character he plays.
The movie is lots of
fun and does not take itself seriously, has a terrific music, and stunning visuals; the camera's movement and video-game-ish use of the screen add to the freshness and originality of the film. The movie has freshness, soul and a special something that stays with you longer after you've seen it. That is entertainment!
Two young biologists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and his girlfriend Elsa (Sarah Polley) are leading a research project specialised in splicing and combining the DNA of different animals to create new creatures to be used for pharmacological and medicinal purposes. The problem starts when they decide to introduce human DNA in the experiment, and a new creature, Dren, is born.
Vincenzo Natali always has great and original ideas regarding the near future and humans' relation and interaction with modern technical and scientific advances. He has shown in his previous low-budget films that an idea is worth more than the means to carry it out. Unfortunately, Splice exemplifies the contrary as this is Natali's biggest budget movie and the most messed up of them all.
The best thing about the film is the concept - His questioning on the convenience and ethics of genetic experimentation from a familiar, personal and emotional point of view. Are we ready to deal with the nasty consequences of silly experimentation in our daily lives? Is experimentation justified per se? Is a Frankenstein-sort-of-genetic monster guilty of its actions? The interesting questions are washed away by a poor over-pretentious script that wants to be a psychological thriller, a horror movie, and a sci-fic movie at the same time.
The script should have focused on building up the characters, so we understand why they act in a certain way. The script forgets to explain, and just hints, Elsa's troubled childhood, which would have served to understand better why Elsa acts how she does, and why she is so ready to nurture a freak child. We do not know why Clive would do some of the foolish things he does, when, at the beginning of the story, he seems to be a very sensible scientist and guy. Only the supporting characters seem to make sense and have an internal logic in their behaviour.
The script gets distracted by the thriller/horror approach, which is destined to fail from the very beginning. The mood and tempo are not right for a thriller, even less for a horror film, and if you don't get that right, the rest does not make any sense. On the other hand, the predictability of the film makes the suspense "suspensefulnessless". After the confrontation between Ginger and Fred the viewer knows what is coming; in fact, any non-scientist would have known immediately what was going to happen to Dren, so I considered a lack of respect towards any scientist to think that they would have acted in such a naive way as the two characters act.
Regarding the acting, Sarah Polley is always very natural in front of the camera, and she is fresh and warm as scientist and Dren's putative mother Elsa. On the contrary, I did not believe for a second Adrian Brody in his role of scientist and forced parent, probably because he did not believe it either. Delphine Chaneac's physique has a mix of beauty, vulnerability, awkwardness and harshness that is perfect to portray the freak nature of mute Dren, so she does well in doing what she was asked for. Finally, we find one of Natali's staple actors - his friend David Hewlett, who convincingly plays the very serious and sensible lab director William Barlow. The rest of the cast are OK in their respective roles.
I was very disappointed with the movie, perhaps because I have always loved Natali's movies and ideas and expected more from this. The worst thing of all is that the movie is pretentious and preposterous at times, so one does not feel sorry rating it low.
