Pun Salad

There were plenty of danger signs here:

• It's a young person movie; I am not young.

• It's very hip; I am instead worried about breaking a hip.

• It has young-people music; young-people music has sucked ever since I turned 30.

• Michael Cera plays the lead; I haven't really liked anything he's done since Juno.

Cera plays Scott Pilgrim: a young man living in Toronto without much to do except half-heartedly play bass in his dreadful band, "Sex Bob-Omb". He feels somewhat defensive about his much-younger girlfriend, a Chinese-Canadian 17-year-old named (really) "Knives Chau".

But one day, Ramona shows up in town. And Scott is smitten. Unfortunately—and I couldn't really work out the reason behind this—having made such a commitment, Scott must defeat Ramona's seven "exes" (mostly, er, ex-boyfriends). And by "defeat", I mean "defeat in battle." Wait, what?

And that's where the movie is cleverly creative: Scott's reality is tilted more than just a tad into the video game/comic book universe. Sound effects are often spelled out on screen. (Remember the old Batman TV show? OK, but it's better here.) Many characters occasionally exhibit superhero powers: flying, super-strength, invulnerability, etc. So Scott's battles with the exes are special-effects extravaganzas.

It's a lot of fun. I laughed all the way through.