Metacritic reviews

As he did in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz", Wright immerses his heroes in pop culture's detritus and diversions, but doesn't drown them in it. You don't have to be dazzled or tickled by the movie, or get every joke, to be touched by it, too.

Put simply: Scott Pilgrim is a blast! The total package is a wildly comic journey into the head of a true original. If you are under 25 you will find all of it really, really funny.

Highly entertaining, from minute to minute, and its semi-mythical portrayal of Torontonian life is entirely charming. If you can stand massive doses of cute and clever, it's a fine use for your summer-movie dollar (whether or not that dollar has a funny old lady on it).

With Michael Cera in the title role, twentysomethings and under will swiftly embrace this original romancer.

The film is repetitive, top-heavy: Wright blows his wad too early. But a different lead might have kept you laughing and engaged.

What will happen to the man-boy when he's all man and can no longer slouch about in baggy pants and hoodie sweatshirts with perpetually flushed cheeks?

This is a discouragingly limp movie in which nothing is at stake.

It's supremely annoying to see the ups and downs of romance reduced to archer-than-arch line readings and bloodless mortal kombat. What's more frustrating is that the film, adapted from Bryan Lee O'Malley's popular comic, is an endless visual delight.

The film is alive with bad rock bands and dizzying bit parts, the standout being Kieran Culkin, in the role of Scott's gay roommate, but we feel them gyrating around a hollow core.

With Scott Pilgrim, Wright leaps over the line from chattery cleverness to all-out self-consciousness.