In adapting Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels following the romantic exploits of Toronto layabout Scott Pilgrim, director Edgar Wright presumably had at least six different titles to choose from. Settling on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is perfectly fitting given that the film often feels as if Wright and his collaborators have packed a planet’s worth of ideas, concepts and techniques into the finished product. O’Malley’s original work established the ethic of spectacular playfulness as it hopped around genres like a video game character soaring through a multitude of hidden realities. Wright pulls from it judiciously, but primarily sends his film springing forward with the wanderlust spirit of the comics, figuring out ways to take advantage of the possibilities of his own form with the same adventurousness that guided O’Malley’s pencil across the paneled page. Ever idea is fair game as Wright incorporates the rhythm and tone of video games, the abandon of rock ‘n’ roll and the defining characteristics of any other pop culture ephemera that skitters across his consciousness. The constant inventiveness of the film is staggering, exhausting and energizing in equal measure. For all the film’s busy business, the human element is never swept aside. Scott Pilgrim’s charge of doing battle with his dream girl’s evil exes to win her hand is heavy with the metaphor of moving past a loved one’s past to build a better present and future, but it’s also swirled together with a traditional hero’s quest and the simple need to accept greater responsibility as a necessary step of finally growing up. Beyond that, the film is filled out by a small battalion of grand supporting characters, the sharpness of their development and fullness of the portrayals not compromised in the slightest by the necessary briskness and brevity of time on screen. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World revels in the boundless language of movies. It doing so, it manages to become something dynamic and new. Not insignificantly, it’s also wildly entertaining.