I actually got the feeling that the weak portrayal of the characters was part of the point. Take the video game elements out of this film, and what are you left with? A bog-standard male-centered rom com. That genre is not known for having well-rounded characters in any case. What it is known for, in fact, is a rather video game-like narrative structure. The male lead in these types of films is always on a quest to win the girl. (Often, he must prove himself superior to one or more of her exes as part of this quest.) The girl's agency in the matter is not addressed—either the guy succeeds at the quest and she falls for him, or (rarely) he fails and she doesn't. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World lampshades the shallowness of this plot structure by making the similarity to a video game hilariously explicit. If you're going to have your characters behaving unrealistically about romance, might as well go the whole hog, you know?
Stuff what I do.
Apparently we're seeing everything from Scott's viewpoint, and he's a self-centered Jerk Ass. We don't see any characterization of character development from anyone else because he can't be bothered to pay attention to them.
Personally(apparently this is an unpopular opinion) I found Knives Chau really annoying but she served her purpose as a character. I found Ramona more involving because she said so little. It made me wonder just what kind of past she had to have dated 7 douchebags. The characters were as rounded as they needed to be otherwise the story might've been even longer, and the Twenty Minutes With Jerks put some people off already. If you want a detailed analysis of it, I suggest you find the vlog that Spoony made after seeing it, it's really in depth and does work.
"I actually got the feeling that the weak portrayal of the characters was part of the point"
If so, the point was misguided. People often invoke the "it's bad on purpose" excuse. It never holds. Unless, that is, it only applies to some small part of the larger work. Which in this case it doesn't. Weak portayals are weak portrayals. Doing them on purpose does not make them stronger.
I recently finished an Evelyn Waugh novel, which per usual was fiercely satirical and hence very unfair and incomplete in its portrayal of the human condition. However, the characters, ridiculous as they appeared, were as fully developed as any character in a random serious novel.
"The characters were as rounded as they needed to be otherwise the story might've been even longer, and the Twenty Minutes With Jerks put some people off"
The entire reason "Twenty Minutes With Jerks" is generally viewed as a bad device is that good writing doesn't need twenty minutes to round off characters. The fact that this movie couldn't manage to make me understand or care about any of the 7 exes—not to mention the main characters—beyond the obvious stereotyping and despite their excrutiatingly long sequences demonstrates how poorly it was written.
I agree with a lot of the review- I didn't care much for the film (but didn't HATE it), but I found all of the characters to be very bland, and the whole "fight for love" thing fell flat because I never felt the characters were shown to be in love. It's like... Scott meets Ramona, and since she's hot and he's awkward suddenly they're in love and he has to fight for her against some jerks. None of the relationships really felt true.
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Genuinely Hilarious, With Genuinely Underdeveloped Characters
I did not read the graphic novel before I saw this film. The movie was essential a moving-picture comic book: subtitled sound effects, super powers, scenes that watch like consecutive panels, etc. It was funny, with lots of hilarious one-liners, lampshade hanging and meta-humor. The geek in me rejoiced. It was a solid movie. I do not regret that I spent $7.50 USD to see this movie.
However, my impressions of the movie walking out of the theater were: (1) this is a movie about romance the creators tried very, very hard not to make into a romantic movie and (2) the creators were so busy pandering to the geeks in the audience that they appear to have forgotten about the characters. I was watching the climax and realized I didn't really care how it turned out. Ramona didn't strike me as a girl worth fighting for; Scott didn't strike me as a guy willing to fight for a girl he'd only just met (the whole movie takes place over the course of a few weeks, it would seem). There were so many characters that were simply there, which should have had stories but didn't (Kim and Envy coming first and foremost to mind, but every character who isn't Scott would count. Including Ramona).
Wallace, the gay roommate, was the best character in the whole movie, hands down: a hilarious Jerkass (with a heart of gold...sometimes?)
It wasn't a bad movie. If you like a dose of really trippy surrealism and funny moments that anyone who reads this site on a regular basis will find genuinely hilarious, it's a great movie. But you have to be willing to look past the weak characters holding up the plot.