Few movies can actually have so much blood, carnage, and absolute political incorrectness, and actually get away with it, and Kick-Ass is one of those films. I'll get to the bottom line, while Kick-Ass is not the greatest superhero film of all-time, and is not as much of a satire of the whole genre as I would have wished, it's just such a good time at the movies, I completely forgot about anything other than just being entertained.
The film is a what if scenario. What if superheroes were real? In a way though, the superheroes in this film are not your average superheroes, more like vigilantes, like the Punisher and such. They kill, they don't just bring the crooks to justice, which is one thing that irks me a touch about the film, but not so much that I didn't enjoy it.
It's all about a gawky teen, named Dave, who decides one day to take his love for superheroes, and put it into practicality by becoming one himself. One thing that the film does, is it doesn't allow Dave (a.k.a. Kick-Ass) to become Batman or the Punisher, he remains as Peter Parker would have had he never been bitten by that spider and still tried to be a superhero. Like the great hero Spider-man, the film is identifiable to just about anyone who grew up as a comic book nerd, like myself, which is partly why the film is a joy to watch.
Like Spider-man, Kick-Ass has his Mary Jane in Katie, and unlike the comic, they actually allow Dave and Katie to hook up in the end, which I like a lot more to be honest. In both the comic and the film, Dave and Katie become best friends cause Katie thinks Dave is gay, the difference is, in the film when he reveals he isn't gay, Katie wants to be his girlfriend, and in the comic she calls him a perverted freak, essentially. For me, this actually gave the film an added layer of emotional connection, maybe because I am a hopeless romantic, but it made what could have been a mindless, raunchy, gore-fest, something that actually had a beating heart at its core.
The film is raunchy at times, actually a lot of the times, but it never seems to be as raunchy as something like Superbad or Knocked Up. It's just the right amount of humor at the right times to make you laugh, and most of these laughs are generated by the pint-sized, 11-year-old assassin Hit-Girl (played marvelously by Chloe Moretz) and her dad, Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, who does his best to be Adam West). Hit-Girl has all of the great one-liners in the film, and her and Big Daddy are really the only two superheroes in the film anyways that actually seem to know what their doing, but their story also lends an emotional core to the final act of the film that I wont spoil by divulging, but it makes the action at the end of the film actually feel as if it was worth something.
I'll just say it, I enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed the comic. The movie actually allowed itself to have more fun, and that's what I liked about it. The film reminded me so much as to why I got into comics as a kid in the first place. I didn't get into comics to have thought provoked, or nothing of that ilk. I got into comics to be entertained, emotionally charged, and taken to a different world for a short period of time, which is what Kick-Ass does exceptionally well. It is over-the-top and kind of cheesy, but it's enjoyable for the kid inside of me to watch. I mean, Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass flying over New York City in a jetpack is so cheesy, but it was my favorite sequence of the film. Or what about the badguy getting blown to bits by a bazooka!?!
Ultimately, if any faults come with the film, it is that the story kind of lags in the middle sections a bit, and it also missed out on a great many opportunities to be smarter than your average comic book film and actually be a genuine satire and not just another cliche' comic book film or spoof. But I can't really hold any of this against it, I had fun watching it, and while I don't think at the end of the year I'll really remember it all that much, for a night on the town, it was well worth my $8.25 ticket.
I give Kick-Ass a B+!
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