KICK-ASS review: more like Kiss-Ass

KICK-ASS review: more like Kiss-Ass

Apr 08

Never really been a huge fan of comic books, myself. They’re hard to keep track of and the writers keep rebooting the continuities on us, which is enough to confuse all but the most religious of acolytes. Hollywood’s seen some success in adapting comics to the screen lately, so it’s only logical that something like Kick-Ass came along. Forget Superhero Movie, this is the superhero movie spoof Gotham City deserves.

The premise behind Kick-Ass is that it’s a superhero flick set in the “real world,” in which super powers, of course, don’t exist. I put “real world” in quotation marks because the world presented in Kick-Ass is far from real (the kid spends like a week in hospital and walks out with metal braces supporting most of his skeleton — like that’s possible in the US’ hideously broken health system).

The screenwriters (adapting an actual comic book, if I’m not mistaken) work hard on making the characters “real” instead, where “real” is a more warts-and-all caricature of the standard Peter Parker-type dweeb than we’re used to, which is something of a double-edged sword. Sure, it’s refreshing to see superheroes that say naughty words and have sex with their girlfriends, but bringing the superhero stereotype a little closer to home lessens the dramatic impact of it all, somehow, like we need someone to be definitively removed from us by at least some degree of fantasy before we project onto them.

The “real world” intentions also falter in scenes depicting the villains, who are cartoony gangster-types ripped straight out of Analyse This or Home Alone or something. Mark Strong makes a good baddie (as always) but I felt kinda let down by his limp, posturing posse of gansters-lite. With Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng among the many gangster goons, it’s a wonder the script wasn’t altered during shooting to make Strong the head of a British crime gang instead of the caricature mafia thing he runs in the finished film. And then there’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse as his son — this guy just isn’t funny when he’s not playing McLovin in Superbad. Sorry.

Another sticking point in Kick-Ass‘ otherwise well-oiled machine is Hit Girl (played by Chloe Moretz). Children that swear are always funny, especially if they’re girls wearing pink and / or purple, but Hit Girl’s performance feels kind of forced, like there’s someone standing just off camera saying the lines and then telling her to repeat them verbatim — it’s clear Chloe Moretz doesn’t always get the tone or intention of the words. Plus she has this weird squinty snarl thing that she pulls off pretty well, but it’s the only expression in her playbook, and it gets pretty shallow pretty quick. I know, I know, working with kids is hard, and Matthew Vaughn’s done a reasonable job with the little tyke, but it still doesn’t quite ring true, and this works against some of the later scenes’ emotional content.

Kick-Ass‘ message is that anyone can be a superhero, super-powers or no. This is hamstrung by the film’s obsessive adherence to established comic book stereotypes. Big Daddy and Hit Girl have an eyebrow-raising arsenal of weapons worth millions (possibly billions) of dollars; if any single person in the world other than Bruce Wayne packed that much hardware, they’d be locked away where they belong (except in America, where this is par for the course). And the “With no power comes no responsibility” gag from the trailer is immediately hamgstrung with the quick follow-up line “But that just isn’t true.” Excuse me, wasn’t this supposed to be a gentle slap on the wrist for self-indulgent comic book movies, not a lazy pat on the back?

Oh, and the movie is violent, but in a curiously plastic, cartoony way. Someone takes a single bullet to the stomach and immediately collapses dead to the ground. Yeah, right. Oh, and Kick-Ass himself has this convenient inability to feel pain, so there are extended scenes of gangsters just laying into the poor kid. If you don’t like watching this stuff (or the aforementioned potty-mouthed pre-teen) then avoid this movie like the plague.

One other problem (this is the last one, I promise) is the film’s structure. It follows the original Spider-Man‘s formula suspiciously well, but it really loses steam in the middle. I was legitimately lost for about 20 minutes of this movie, waiting for something interesting to happen. And my god it apes Spider-Man — the high-school crush, the rich guy and his son as baddies, the kind but oblivious parent figure, the burning building in which our hero can inexplicably breathe despite the complete lack of oxygen — if you’ve seen Spider-Man you might find yourself positively bored by some of Kick-Ass‘ more indulgent sections.

For all these negative points, the positives are yet more abundant. You don’t want to read paragraphs and paragraphs of me praising this film, though, do you? Wouldn’t that be boring? I’ll try to be quick:

- It looks nice. It’s well-shot and well-cut, with some visceral action scenes and a funky colour palette. Avoid if epileptic, however.

- Eclectic soundtrack will please people who like music of this kind.

- Performances are generally good (bar Hit Girl and, bizarrely, Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy).

- Some witty jokes — TV’s Lost seems to be a popular punching-bag these days.

- Sticks to its guns. Hit Girl cops almost as much violence as she doles out — it’s good to see the filmmakers didn’t pull any punches and make her untouchable to the baddies. Not that I like seeing little girls get beaten up or anything.

- Its attempts at maturity sometimes stick. The awkward gender-misunderstanding subplot feels like it came out of a completely different movie — a rom-com with Ryan Reynolds, perhaps — but I actually managed not to roll my eyes once during the budding romance scenes.

- Manages to drum up some genuine emotion, though god knows how. I didn’t particularly like any of these characters, but there are some pretty weighty scenes here.

To summarise, I enjoyed Kick-Ass, though it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It follows in the footsteps of its forebears a little too closely to be a true parody, and its cartoonishness jars with the gritty, ugly portrait of “reality” it’s attempting to paint. There’s the obligatory Pointless Flashback Scene in the middle as well, and I’m getting thoroughly sick of those, but the earnestness of the performances, the freshness of the visuals and the crisp, driving script helped me overcome these smaller quibbles.

Let’s just hope that the sequel (if there is one) follows in Spider-Man‘s footsteps and improves dramatically on this promising but flawed first film.

Kick-Ass score

73/100