"On the pages of this website, I have waged war against the tropes of the romantic comedy genre, which tells the same story again and again, seemingly less romantically or humorously with an escalating amorality with each passing year.  And so I am pleased to see, for the second consecutive August, a film arrive to serve the romcom its eviction notice by attacking the dynamics of love with explosive levels of imagination.  Unlike last year's (500) Days of Summer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World DOES believe in love.  What it doesn't believe in is anything that's ever been done in a previous film.  Substituting video game action for mistaken identities and scheming magazine editors, it finds wisdom and genius in a whirlpool of invention that will baffle as many moviegoers as it enchants.  Count me in the later group:  not only was I delighted by Edger Wright's nutty adventure, I found myself profoundly moved...the whole idea of the movie (based on a comic book series created by Bryan Lee O'Malley) is so crazy I'm amazed anyone had the audacity to mount it.  Scott Pilgrim and his friends seem to literally, without comment by anyone, live in a video game and their lives are played by video game rules.  Not only does everyone in the Pilgrimverse have access to amazing superpowers at the drop of a hat (though they only use them while fighting), but words describing their circumstances and awarding points for them appear in the air when needed, as do bars measuring the progress of things both important and banal.  Characters grab Power-Ups out of the air, extra lives are awarded, and each defeated villain explodes into a pile of coins (upon beating Matthew, Scott bemoans that he hadn't even turned into enough money for bus fare).  Each time Scott battles an Ex, they stand in opposition on either side of the screen while the word “VS” hovers between them.  The fight between Scott and the Katayanagi Brothers takes the form of a Battle of the Bands between them and Sex Bob-Omb, with both bands playing at opposite ends of a concert hall while monsters representing their music fight it out over the heads of the screaming crowd.  This movie is nuts, and I loved it...Michael Cera is one of those guys who's a star first and an actor second, and the trick as his director is getting the depth necessary to take best advantage of his iconic dorkiness.  I've never seen him better than he is here:  not only is Cera great in the action sequences, but he reveals steely courage I'd have never thought he had in him.  Winstead, always a personal favorite, is amazing here.  I can only imagine how daunted an actress must be by a script that asks her to be so hot snow melts under her feet, but she pulls off so many contradictions with consummate skill:  seeming every bit that hot but still genuinely attracted to a Regular Guy, deeply messed up but also super-cool.  And the one action scene she gets to show off in (battling steel whip-swinging Roxy with a giant Thor-style hammer) is terrific... Scott Pilgrim vs. the World tells its story in a format you'd associate with a hollow stylistic exercise, but instead uses all that crazy showmanship to get to the heart of matters that have eluded the most straitlaced dramas.  Over time, I'd expect Edger Wright's film to attract a cult made up of equal parts brokenhearted exes, action aficionados, video game cultists, rock music fans and anybody who just likes the sound of the words The Clash at Demonhead.  If you see yourself in any of these groups, give Scott Pilgrim a try:  there's nothing better than discovering a bold, creative movie that seems to have been made just for you."