Edgar Wright, Michael Cera, the keys to the special effects cupboard... Awesome.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is Hot Fuzz, Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead director Edgar Wright’s first feature made with big American money, and it is a spectacular, epic, blockbusting electric geek-out.

Working from his own screenplay, based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s cult Scott Pilgrim graphic series, Wright has delivered a frantic, breathless film fusion of music videos, old-school gaming, comic books, cult animation and comedy that is dizzyingly, relentlessly entertaining.

To try and describe and synopsise this hyperkinetic, coin-op odyssey would be to diminish it. Wright’s film is epileptic with ideas; jokes, quirks, tricks, flash and gimmicks are thrown at you from the outset in a skull shattering headbutt of an assault on your senses.

In brief, the film concerns the eponymous Pilgrim- played with typically nervous, off-kilter cool by go-to-geek Michael Cera- a Torontonian slacker, mooching his way through the callous, depressive ladykiller funk that follows a bad break-up. Bassist in his band Sex Bob-omb (Wright apparently asked composer Beck to make the band’s songs somewhere between awful and awesome), Pilgrim is semi-ironically dating 17 year old superfan Knives Chau until he dreams of roller-blading beauty Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Knives is cut (eventually), but in order to date Ramona, Scott must defeat her seven evil exes.

Pilgrim's progress? 2nd and a half base

It is as ridiculous as it sounds, but it is played with a dead-pan self awareness, a knowing comic book absurdity which it embraces and amplifies. Director Wright must currently be sitting, very pleased with himself, on a throne of burnt out editing suites because this is a cool, hip comedy that is absolutely bathed in whizz bang post-production effects.

Wright has form for visual flair, but this is properly eye-gouging stuff; smash cuts, ostentatious wipes and post-production graphics, a billion throw-away pop-culture references- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World truly does not spare the horses.

There is almost too much going on; there is barely a second to think before Wright whips you on to the next bit of fizzing, popping eye candy. You shouldn’t assume that this film is all smoke and exploding mirrors though.

The film does explode into super-super-reality during the Street Fighter style battles, but there is a lot of good work going on in the film’s (relatively) quieter sections. Cera is great, charmingly confused, driven and hopeless, and the supporting cast is pretty amazing. Jason Schwartzman, Brandon Routh and Chris Evans have fun as the super-powered, end-of-level-boss-style, evil exes while Kieran Culkin, Mark Webber, Anna Kendrick and Alison Pill all get big, affectionate laughs as Pilgrim’s circle of friends.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World has flaws of course, but it gives you so much to enjoy that it can be forgiven when the odd firework doesn’t go off, or an occasional face-melting guitar solo rumbles on a bit too long. It is a film made with and packed with love, joy and enthusiasm; it references and reveres while it steals and, in its own roughhouse way, satirises. It should establish Wright’s prodigious, hyperactive talent as a fixture in Hollywood, so go and see it immediately and make sure it does.

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