4/5
(PG15) US. Michael Cera, Alison Pill, Mark Webber
Scott Pilgrim vs the World may be a US studio movie and have cost more than three times the combined budgets of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, but for British director Edgar Wright it’s no huge leap from Spaced, the ’90s TV series that made his name. Like Spaced, Scott Pilgrim trades in the lives of twentysomething slackers and springs from the world of the comic. The two also share a similar relationship to realism: what we get are down-to-earth observations on everyday lives explained with wild flights of visual and narrative fancy.

Whether you like it will probably rest with how you feel about Scott, as played by Cera. It’s the kind of role that he regularly plays, but he’s likeable and free of the super-cool jive-talking that mars films such as Juno. It means that when the frosty Ramona Flowers tumbles into his life, we’re running along with him.

Scott Pilgrim could have been a noisy, flashy mess, but it has heart, which makes it feel fun and unique, and more like a lo-fi, endearing mess instead.