Scott (Michael Cera - "Arrested Development", Juno, Superbad) is your typical driftless 22-year old: unemployed, living off of his well-to-do roommate, hanging out with his high school-age "girlfriend", Knives. Don't worry, he's not really a cradle robber, they mostly just play video games (particularly a great looking mashup of DDR & Street Fighter) and talk about music. Like every good slacker, Scott also plays bass in a band. His band, Sex Bob-omb, sucks but has aspirations of hitting the big time. One night, Scott dreams of a mysterious pink-haired girl on roller blades. When he sees her in real life the next day in the library it starts him down a painful journey of self-discovery that might just end in true love.
The movie is absolutely steeped in pop culture references: all of the bands are named after NES games (Clash at Demonhead, Crash 'n the Boys), many scenes visually reference specific video games, there's even a scene that borrows the music and laugh track from Seinfeld. Yes, it probably helped my enjoyment that I got a lot (but by no means all) of these references, but it's certainly not necessary to understand them to like the movie. I would go into more detail about some of this stuff, but I think this is definitely one of those movies that the less you know going into it the better it's going to be. On top of this, it's full of funny performances and intricately choreographed action sequences that don't require any specialized hipster knowledge. Don't take my word for it though. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.
1 comment:
I saw a teaser for this a while back and thought it looked interesting. Then recently I saw another trailer, read an article and review about in Rolling Stone, and then saw several of the cast doing the late night show circuit... now I'm pretty excited about seeing it. Sadly, I may have to wait for it on Netflix, only time will tell.
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