Kick-Ass is Anything But
Chances are if you enjoyed Watchman or Superbad, you’re the target demographic for Kick-Ass. Unfortunately it is neither as ambitious as Watchman nor funny as Superbad and an insult to fanboys everywhere.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn(“Layer Cake”) and based on the comic by John S. Romita and Mark Millar, Kick-Ass tells the story of Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), an average teen who decides he’s going to become a superhero. So Dave orders a green wet suit, some kendo sticks, and Kick-Ass is born. After his first attempt at crime fighting hits Youtube he becomes an overnight sensation and craziness ensues. Kick-Ass is one of the many films to jump on the cell phone video to Youtube bandwagon, trying to make itself as relevant as possible to its audience, and to some extent succeeds, capturing the fantasy that if you get enough views on Youtube you become a star. But that is as far as Kick-Ass is willing to go in terms of social commentary.
The movie quickly digresses from its clever premise into a typical superhero fan fair: crime bosses with bad tans and crime fronts, side-plots of winning the girl, and flying, which would be fine and dandy, but Kick-Ass fails where other movies have succeeded in its attention to character. Neither Dave Lizewski nor his alter ego Kick-Ass is remotely likeable, which is unfortunate because we have to suffer through his voice throughout the majority of the film. Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Clark Kent, we cared about these characters even when they weren’t dawning their capes and masks. In Kick-Ass the characters are simply cardboard cutouts parading around to facilitate the paper thin plot.
Now, a lot of the chatter about Kick-Ass will not be on how bad the story or lame the hero was, instead, the controversy stems from easily the best thing about the film, Hit Girl. Played Chloe Grace Moretz, Hit Girl talks like a sailor and fights like a ninja, not something you’d expect from an 11 year old. But her performance steals the film and nearly saves it from turning into a complete disaster. But must we have an eleven year old girl spitting out cuss words and chopping off heads to be entertained now-a-days?
Kick-Ass would argue yes. It would say that as long as the jokes are crude, the language vulgar, and the violence explicit, than they are putting out a good product. But much of the problem with this line of thinking is the same problem that plagues the film. When Martin Scorsese casted Jodie Foster to play a twelve year old prostitute in Taxi Driver, he did so to show the tragic reality of the situation. When Quentin Tarantino spills so much blood that it gets on the camera lens in kill Bill it’s because he’s enamored with the theatricality of his art form and the tradition from which it came from. So if Kick-Ass wants superfluous violence and language, fine by me, but give it a reason, back it up with a story. If not, than you just mocking me and the rest of the people in the theater.
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MORE INFORMATION
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http://www.iamkick-ass.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777
