I love the universe of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the cheap and fast graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley. It’s a world in which the youthful bliss of enjoying a great rock concert isn’t expressed solely via a rocking song, but by literal shockwaves of sound that knock people on their asses. It’s a world where subtext is text, where characters are rooted in the sexual naivete of a boy spending countless hours in front of Link to the Past.

It’s a world that you’ll love if you’ve ever picked up a controller for a videogame. For my generation and those slightly older, Wright’s film will act as a piece of nostalgia, one that draws you back to a simpler day in which relationships, like every other activity, seemed to be a battle; in Scott Pilgrim, however, these battles are explicit, explosive, vibrant, pixellated and beautiful.

Wright — the creator of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two of the funniest and most original films to stem from the last decade — has outdone himself here. He has taken the simplest of stories (boy wants girl, but must win her heart by coming to terms with his and her past) and embedded it in a world of nerdy pastel glow. For some who don’t understand the appeal, it will be a dissociating experience. For the rest, who would like to conquer their personal battles with giant glowing hammers and beasts summoned by the power of garage rock, it’ll be a wet dream.

More than anything, Scott Pilgrim succeeds on the level of mimicking the pacing and framing of the comic book realm it was birthed in. There isn’t a traditional 3-act structure to be seen here, but an oddly progressive series of stylized vignettes containing heightened characters, hysterical comedy painted from the broadest pop culture palette imaginable, and dialogue that could be dreamed up upon a bored high schooler’s notebook margins. For those expecting a world that resembles our own, you will be surprised by how quickly Pilgrim defies classification — it would not be unorthodox for Pilgrim and his lovely lass Ramona Flowers to scale the framework of a building to defeat a giant ape before scrounging up sufficient bus fare.

Michael Cera as Pilgrim both plays into his unalterable personality and also showcases a new physicality and liveliness. He’s neither as routine in Pilgrim nor as insufferably awkward as we’re used to seeing him; for all of his character’s naive weirdness, I still found myself rooting for him as a legitimate hero. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as Flowers, is destined for Halloween costume greatness — she is the embodiment of the hipster beauty. While she’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, she’s wonderful at rattling 14 types of tea off in a trendy/sexy manner, which is what she’s called to do.

The main thrust of the film is really in the hands of Wright’s eclectic supporting cast, from the young sage Anna Kendrick (whose role seems to have been chopped down severely) to the hysterical Kieran Culkin as Pilgrim’s gay roommate Wallace to Brandon Routh and feisty newcomer Alison Pill. (It’s worth mentioning here as a tangent how pleasantly the topic of homosexuality is integrated into the film. While there are certain gags that derive from Wallace’s lifestyle and the meek lifestyle of the hipster in general, it’s refreshing to watch a film that treats homosexual characters as a given rather than a motivator of plot.)

For a generation of movie watchers (likely those who are around 10 to 14 years old) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will be a Goonies or Three Ninjas or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is a unique romp that stands apart from most everything else, even its own writer/director’s oeuvre. It meshes well-directed action with humor both broad and insightful humor and fails in that act very sparsely. I fear the backlash that Scott Pilgrim will face — those who found 500 Days of Summer to be a trendy Urban Outfitters nightmare may miss the point in comparing Wright’s work to that romance. Pilgrim isn’t a love letter to hipsters, but a voyage into the framework of Technicolor musical 8-bit ideas that draw hipsters to those trendy clothes in the first place. Wright hasn’t created a cash cow to sell soundtracks. His love for this world is genuine, and it shows.

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