Alternate Film Criticism - Spoony (Noah Antwiler) on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

Although cinema across the world has developed and expanded through many different ages, film criticism itself has remained reasonably conservative in its construction. Looking at the works of definitive critics such as Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert or even British contemporaries like Mark Kermode the style of criticism hasn't really developed in a truly new form of progression. 

Instead it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that a new wave of criticism came about. That’s not to say that these foundations were not previously set in our culture. It is generally accepted that the rise of this 'new criticism' was inspired by the American television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (1988-1999), which itself was inspired by the nineteen eighties film It Came From Beyond Midnight (1982). 

For those who are unfamiliar with this new criticism, it is structured in a much less formal way than their previous contemporaries. Like Mystery Science Theatre, it often takes a bias comedic approach to films. Instead of trying to structurally define themes and artistic precision, the new criticism tends to define itself from the critics own previous preferable standpoints. What I mean here is that, they tend to focus on the story development and overall narrative from a more personal perspective. There is also a noticeable bias to these works as the critics address their audiences in the first person perspective and reflect upon their own opinion as well as from a more traditional aesthetic based stand point.

This gives consumers the ability to annotate the emotive language that the films may address without having to know (like with other contemporary critics) the language and technical terms of cinema. Particularly prominent internet critics who use this new wave style to form the basis of their reviews include: Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic), James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd), Noah Antwiler (Spoony) and the collective group of reviewers at Spill.com headed by the websites founder Corey Coleman.

Anyway, this post isn't about this form of criticism. Well, it is to some point, however this review in particular relates more progressively to the antithesis of the styles effectiveness. And so back on point, I actually came across this review around the time of the films release. After watching the film myself I found it to be an interesting watch. The film itself worked well upon the way that it defined its flawed characters and embraced the youth culture it aimed to present.


However watching the video Noah Antwiler gives an extremely in-depth deconstruction of the movie to likes of which I haven't seen in either print (newspapers, film magazines) or any other form of medium of a current film in quite some time.