Michael Cera, as Scott Pilgrim, has less sexuality than a monkey. Once you can get by his lusting after the unattainable girl in the red wig, this film is one of the more imaginative young love movies of recent times.

It is also one of the few movies shot in Toronto that is actually set in Toronto. Budget filmmakers love to shoot Toronto for New York or Chicago or just about any big city because it looks like just about any big city. Although, to be fair, no New York director would confuse Manhattan and Toronto.

The story is minimal: Scott is a gee wiz kid living with his slacker buddies and second guitar in their band. Romona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a recent transplant from New York who appears in the mix of young adults trying to find direction. (She comes to Toronot to find herself? She could have gone to Yonkers).

Soctt persues, she resists. Meanwhile Scott has been dating a high school girl (Ellen Wong) who fights Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead )at every opportunity to keep her man (why does she want him? Never answered).

The strength of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Word is not the story but the style. Director Edgar Wright inserts words, titles, comic book “Pow” and “Crash” in a way that tries to emmulate the graphic novel origins of the story. He suceeds in punching up a ho hum tale with cleverness.

The merger of the graphic novel style with live action film is a next step in evolution of visual presentation, and this movie is enjoyable as a fluffy fling and also, at a future point, a benchmark along the way to a graphic movie form we are only just discovering.