Kick-Ass (2010)
Amidst the present-day cinemascape of mega-budget comic book movies comes Kick-Ass, ready to satire the genre by asking the question “What would happen if an average guy took it upon himself to be a superhero?”
It’s an enticing premise, to be sure, something I myself have wondered many times before. Kick-Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn (who also directed one of my all-time favorites, Layer Cake), is a hip and violent movie that almost seems like a comic book lovechild of Tarantino and Kevin Smith (There are even a few Pulp Fiction references to boot).
Kick-Ass follows Aaron Johnson as a high school loser who begins to pursue the life of a superhero. During his first outing, he is severely beaten, earning him some damaged nerves and metal plates. With these newfound “powers”, he ventures out again, this time successfully fending off three attackers while simultaneously getting recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
Kick-Ass is born, and soon attracts the attention of a seriously ass kicking superhero duo of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his 11 year old daughter Hit Girl
(Chloe Moretz). They’re doing their own (very, very violent) crimefighting, trying to get to the big baddy, played by Mark Strong. Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays Strong’s son who seeks both paternal pride and a bitchin’ superhero identity.
The cast is well-suited for their roles. Johnson seems like he could slide in next to Jesse Eisenberg on the “awkward young guy” continuum (with Michael Cera of course on Eisenberg’s other side). He’s naively sweet but also tough enough to stand and fight. Nic Cage gives an inspired performance as Big Daddy, occasionally channeling an Adam West accent and bursting at the seams with pride over his daughter. Hit Girl, played by Chloe Moretz, will of course be the most talked about, and with good cause. She embraces the violence and obscenities with confidence, famously dropping the c-bomb at one point. While Moretz annoyed me in her little sister role in 500 Days of Summer, she’s easily the best part of Kick-Ass.
Kick-Ass is cutesy, snarky, and sticks to the source material through inventively portrayed backstories. The problem with the movie is that it seems to be well aware of its strengths, so for everything else, it decides to coast. It coasts past any truly creative humor, past any overall moral message, and past coming up with original solutions to its fight scenes. Kick-Ass is like the cool guy at school who knows he’s cool, so he acts like he’s cool, and it makes him less cool.
The premise of Kick-Ass requires that the story stay grounded in reality – after all, we’re supposed to identity with Johnson as one of us in the real world; he’s seen all the movies and comic books that we have. Kick-Ass does stay grounded, but this is a problem when so much killing goes on. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are intelligent and efficient, no doubt, but they’re hard to root for when they kill so casually in a world that’s supposed to be our own. I don’t really have a problem with violence in my movies, but Kick-Ass just seems so mean-spirited that it’s hard to ignore.
That being said, the fight sequences were still my favorite parts of the film. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are truly amazing in action. In fact, in retrospect, I would rather the film had embraced its strong action sequences and taken a more serious approach. This is because the humor seemed like it was just recycled generic “cool loser” dialogue. A subplot involves the girl Johnson likes and the rest of his school thinking he’s gay because he was ostensibly brought into the emergency room naked (he had the paramedics dispose of his costume). Not only does this result in a lot of obvious gay jokes, but I can’t really see how the student body came to the “gay” conclusion when it seemed like their fellow peer was raped. It seems either not entirely thought-through or just plain cynical, and with the rest of the film being so amoral, I suspect the latter.
Finally, although the fight scenes were true delights, many of them ended the same way – one person getting pinned down, another showing up to save them at the last minute. This happens at least three times, two of them within fifteen minutes of each other. There’s also a “secret weapon” that they hold out on showing for way too long. I guessed it when it was first brought up, and I don’t even do that in movies.
Overall, Kick-Ass is a movie that is great in some areas and regretable in others. It’s clear that it’s found a huge fanbase, which isn’t surprising given its slick, action-packed, self-aware take on the comic book genre. I really did enjoy the movie, but I thought that it could have been much better if the ideas had been more fleshed out. Still, Kick-Ass manages to be entertaining and pretty clever, so in the end it lives up to its name.
Final rating: 7/10
–James A. Janisse
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Last week I watched (500) Days of Summer. I’ve heard a lot about this, and everyone around me seemed to adore the movie. I remember wanting to see it when it came out, but I never got around to it. Now I finally did. And I was a bit underwhelmed.
Maybe it’s because I had seen almost all of the first third of the movie in previews and review shows. Maybe it’s because although I think Zooey Deschanel is cute, I don’t think she’s the most attractive and endearing girl in the universe like some people do. I don’t know.
I enjoyed some of the aspects of the movie. The framing device is of course very cool and interesting. I love when movies aren’t chronological, and this is no exception. It provides a perfect means of comparing different points in a relationship. Other specific points that I heartily enjoyed were the music and dance sequence in the park, and the expectations vs. reality side-by-side part. These were all really interesting and captivated me for their entire duration.
But somewhere near the beginning of this movie, I was removed from a loving standpoint. This is an “Indie” style movie, not only in means of its production but also its genre. It’s true that “Indie” has taken a certain connotation now that stands separate from the related grouping of “independent” movies. They’re movies like Juno, where there’s indie music heavily featured, quirky characters who speak quirkily, and lots of drawn title cards and frames.
I’m not a fan of typical indie dialogue. It’s almost like it’s trying too hard to be unique and witty, and I feel like it ends up being very unnatural. That’s one of the major turn-off points of this movie for me. Even though my current relationship had some very strong parallels to the beginning of the filmic one, I just couldn’t believe that people behaved and talked this way. Maybe I don’t have cool, indie enough friends. Truth is, maybe I don’t want to.
I also wasn’t a fan of Deschanel’s Summer character. She just seemed cold and aloof, and I couldn’t see why Joseph Gordon-Levitt was so infatuated with her. Gordon-Levitt, by the way, does do a great job. He’s a strong leading actor that shows he can carry a movie, and he brings a nice breath of fresh air to a romantic comedy with an emotional yet grounded and reliable character.
In the end, I probably would have enjoyed this movie a lot more had I not seen so much of it before actually seeing the movie. Because of my pre-exposure to it, I ended up feeling like the dialogue was weak, and characters like Summer and the younger sister were just annoying. It still has a good story, a strong framing device, and enough cinematic tricks to keep you interested the entire duration, however. I just wish I could have loved it as much as everyone else did.
Final rating: 6/10
–James A. Janisse
