Movie Review – Kick-Ass

I’m not sure at what point in the superhero movie craze we’ve reached, but “Kick-Ass” at least indicates that its started to eat itself. Based on Mark Millar’s comic book (from the second phase of his career, known as “chasing sweet Hollywood money with weak comic books), “Kick-Ass” comes with an appropriately high concept premise – what if some random kid in the real world put a mask on and decided to be a superhero – and plenty of the old ultraviolence to keep the kids entertained (this is a gleefully unrestrained hard R). But a little scope or ambition might have been nice.

Aaron Johnson plays an average 17 year old kid (we know this because of the number of times he tells us he’s just an average 17 year old kid. Thanks voiceover!) who is invisible to girls, all too visible to bullies, and obsessed with comic books. One day he decides to put on a mask and fight crime, under the name Kick-Ass. He has no abilities to speak off, and ends up just taking a lot of beatings. But a mix of the Internet and circumstance turn him into a minor celebrity (like keyboard cat, but with way more merchandise) and also raise the attention of a local crimelord. He also spawns a series of other caped crusaders, including Big Daddy (played by my favorite go-to loony toon: Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (newbie Chloe Moritz), who are far more effective and violent.

The problems with “Kick-Ass” begin with its main character, a sniveling, whiny, kind of annoying teenager who is essentially the male equivalent of Kristen Stewart’s character in “Twilight.” He’s pretty uninteresting and the film doesn’t seem to understand that, so we waste 2/3 of the movie focused on his boring, boring life, the boring, boring girl he like, and his boring, boring friends. There’s also the realism issue. For a film that keeps telling us it wants to be about a superhero in the real world, “Kick-Ass” doesn’t take place in anything remotely resembling the real world. The bright, comic book pastel color palette and set designs evoke Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, but also the clearly fictional comic book world they take place in. The movie never stops too long to think about the logic of its plot developments and it has no problem sacrificing realism in the name of a joke. It also gets the little things wrong, like the idea that everybody still uses MySpace in 2010.

Things get a little more interesting around the peripheries, especially with Big Daddy and Hit Girl. At times both of them, but especially Hit Girl, seem like they’re just around to court attention and controversy, but at least Hit Girl is more recognizably human than she was in the book. Its also interesting that Nicolas Cage basically brainwashes his daughter and devotes both of their lives to brutal (and unlawful) violence, even if the film doesn’t seem particularly interested in exploring that particular ambiguity. In many ways, they seem much closer to the film’s stated vision of somebody putting on a mask and fighting crime in the real world. But the film doesn’t take the road, nor does it really question how creepy and wacked-out they actually are.

So what are we left with? Yet another mediocre superhero movie with an above-average helping of blood, guts, and swearing. I’m a person who kept reading comic books long after it was acceptable for a person of my age to do so, and even I’m getting really bored with all of this. The problem here, I think, may be that the source material was weak to begin with, but an uninspired script and generic action direction (from Matthew Vaughn) don’t help matters much. If you’re 17 and a boy, then this might be a good movie for you to see. Otherwise, just wait for Tony Stark to come back.