So OK, I saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. It's ... pretty good. Funny, sweet, generous and remarkably true to the spirit of the original graphic novel.
It would be wrong and misguided and insufferably fanboyish to argue that the book is better. But the book is better. It's a miniature masterpiece that turns the most unpromising of subjects -- a slacker's halting progress toward maturity -- into something heartfelt and human and true. The movie is great fun, but it's very, very slight. Unavoidably so: when you telescope a six-volume novel down to two hours of screen time, stuff gets lost. Characters drop out or get shortchanged, textures get coarsened, the story has less room to breathe.
Most of the movie's compromises come at the expense of its female characters (though, SPOILER ALERT HERE, I also miss Stephen Stills' coming-out). Envy Adams doesn't register as much more than a cartoon. Kim Pine (played by the wonderful Alison Pill) doesn't have enough to do. Knives Chau (Ellen Wong, also terrific) is absent from much of the movie's second half. And Ramona seems weirdly limp and passive in the final act. Why is Scott fighting for her, again? (On the up side, Aubrey Plaza makes an awesomely bitchy Julie Powers.)
As a hometown fan, I guess I also wanted more of Toronto. This post from the Guardian film blog gives the movie due credit for all stuff about Toronto that it gets right. But I miss how specific the book is: about the crappiness of the food at Sneaky Dee's, the shabbiness of the Dufferin Mall, and so forth. And more than anything, I miss Scott and Todd Oldham (evil ex number three) fighting it out amid THE STARK EXISTENTIAL HORROR OF HONEST ED'S. (To be fair, I understand why this scene got left out: it doesn't advance the plot much. Besides which, who'd ever believe that such a place existed anywhere in the real world -- let alone Toronto?)
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