Kick-Ass is not so much a kick-ass movie

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie. Enjoy.

review by Peter Lewis

Comic books have become the great mine from which Hollywood can extract “fresh” material. Over the past decade, audiences have been inundated with all species of the genre, from Hellboy and Iron Man to Sin City and Watchmen. The appeal is obvious. The stories are essentially ready made, they offer simple conflict (aka action), and are generally well known to the prime male demographics.

One of the most recent incarnations of this film path is Kick-Ass, starring Aaron Johnson as the titular character. The premise is simple: why aren’t there more people out there trying to be super heroes?

Disaffected and bored, Dave Lizewski (Johnson) decides that he will take that super hero plunge. Dubbing himself Kick-Ass, he begins prowling the streets searching for crimes after school, much like a boy scout might seek out an old lady to earn a merit badge. Despite initial struggles, Dave has the (questionable) luck to intercede in a gangland beating. While the fight may have been scored a draw in the ring, he’s able to save a man’s life and gets videoed in the process. A sort of viral cult of Kick-Ass is born.

Running concurrently to Dave’s story is that of Damon Macready (aka Big Daddy) and Mindy Macready (aka Hit Girl), played by Nicolas Cage (Ghost Rider, Raising Arizona) and Chloe Moretz (500 Days of Summer, Bolt) respectively. Their existence offers a humorously distorted counterweight to the earnest naivety of Dave/Kick-Ass. Both characters ooze irony. With a penchant for blades, Mindy/Hit Girl is a foul-mouthed  assassin in a girl scout’s body. Damon, on the other hand, is an unassuming, Ward Cleaver father figure, but with a massive array of automatic weapons. Hellbent on wiping out his entire organization, Big Daddy and Hit Girl are set on a crash course with Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), a NYC mafioso.

Kick-Ass is directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake). Though Kick-Ass was only his third film as director, Vaugn has a variety of experience as a producer. His sense of aesthetics seems to have been heavily influenced by the glossy Guy Ritchie (Vaughn was a producer on Lock, Stock and Snatch). Kick-Ass is thick with biting repartee and highly stylized violence. While the end result is generally both funny and stimulating, it is superficial. It exists as mere confection. The human appetite is diverse, however, seeking the sweet just as often as the savory.

It gives plenty of chuckles and a plethora of violence. Which, as a comic book cum movie, presumably was the intent of the filmmakers. As such, perhaps Kick-Ass and its ilk should be judged on a separate scale, one that chucks believability out the window and instead assesses a scale of entertainment around juvenile values. On this scale, Kick-Ass is a success and would warrant a slight grin.

Overall, however, Kick-Ass is a rather pedestrian film. To be certain, it’s outfitted with flashy displays, graphically aesthetic fight sequences, and biting comedy, but like its narrator, it’s mere dressing on a rather dull film.

• Kick-Ass is playing at the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith, and the Malco Van Buren Cinema. Link here for time and ticket info.

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