More accurately Scott Pilgrim vs. Seven Evil Exes, six guys and one girl whom he must in some sense “defeat” in order to win the hand of the pink-haired, then blue-haired, then green-haired girl of his dreams. (Literally she first appeared to him, on skates, in a dream.) The serial conflicts, supernatural martial-arts contests punctuated with spelled-out sound effects in the style of the old Batman television show (“WHUMP!”), are so deep into fantasy that even a shoulderless wimp such as Michael Cera can compete, untrained, on equal footing. So deep indeed that we lose touch with the metaphor. In what sense, and why, must he best these out-of-the-picture rivals? The ironic facial expression of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, her raised-eyebrow skepticism, is very fetching even if not very revealing. Still, the singular triumph of this hard-trying movie is that Cera manages to hang onto his humanity, his Canadian modesty, his individualistic deft touch, his sidelong delivery of lines, amid all the brassy pop-culture self-consciousness, the comic-bookishness and video-gamesmanship, the distancing devices (superimposed title on a new setting: “Fun fact: This place is a toilet”), and the sophomoric cleverness of British director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). Wright’s best gambits, which have the practical purpose of speeding the action along in addition to the purely ornamental purpose of showing off, are the dreamlike scene changes in mid-dialogue. With Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.