Well, Thursday's poll turned out to be about as even as a fight between a baby seal and a spiked club, so this movie review is on the comic book adaptation of Kick-Ass.
The name aptly describes the nature of the movie, and I feel that making obvious puns such as "this movie was kick-ass" are as unnecessary as French victory dances, and as such, I will refrain from such unimaginative tomfoolery.
Though it was pretty kick ass.
Now the main character of this relatively realistic superhero story is Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), who apparently happens to be a regular teenage boy. That is, a clumsy, socially inept, chronic masturbator who wacks off to his chubby, middle aged English teacher at every conceivable opportunity.
He gets the notion of becoming a masked crimefighter after witnessing several incidents of Diffusion of Responsibility, and subsequently orders a wetsuit, a mask and some sticks with knobby bits off Amazon.
He embarks on his superhero career by getting shanked and hit by a car within 10 minutes of attempting to do any sort of "good". He barely survives, but gets half his skeleton covered in metal, which leads me to believe that they managed to sneak in some sort of superpowered advantage because he can't feel pain and is moderately impervious to getting whacked with things. Somewhat like a f****** ghetto wolverine.
Now, the movie would be pretty dull if it was all about some kid in tights getting his nipples twisted off every five seconds, which is where Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) come in. A masked vigilante father and daughter duo bent on taking down obligatory villain Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong), they take the hopelessly out-of-his-depth Dave under their proverbial wing and help him to not f****** suck as much as he does otherwise.
One thing I would like to point out is that the character of Frank D'Amico also entertained me more than most comic book villains because of his penchant for roundhouse kicking anything that looked at him funnily, and then shooting three kinds of Jesus out of it.
Director Matthew Vaughn followed the source material quite faithfully, and we are thus rewarded with fluidly choreographed fight scenes that leave you giggling like a little f****** schoolgirl on her first dose of ecstasy, and somewhat juvenile but always lighthearted exposition.
Most of the action scenes belong to Hit Girl, who tries to put on a gruff, foul mouthed facade, but ultimately fails because of how adorable she is while killing hordes of henchmen to the tune of The Dickies' "Banana Splits".
Well, adorable in a psychotically disturbing fashion. Then again, maybe I'm just weird.
Pros: Excellent fight scenes; Storyline wasn't terrible; Great performances by the cast; Hit Girl.
Cons: Storyline was slightly predictable and a tad clichéd; Constantly thinking about how awesome Hit Girl is makes you feel like pedophile.
Consensus: 8/10 useless henchmen. Kick-Ass is a great popcorn flick that you should definitely watch at the movies, and then download or even, dare I say it, buy a good quality copy of it for the archives.
The story wasn't that cliche so I have to disagree there. I found it to be somewhat original. Can you think another story similar enough to this, that would warrant a 'I heard this before' type reaction? Naw. I liked the movie not so much because it was 'kick-ass' but because of how at no point did it take itself too seriously. The director knew it was a campy, fun story, and that's what was portrayed by the cast. I mean really, the dude fired a goddamn rocket launcher with ZERO recoil and I was actually okay with that. :/
ReplyDeleteIn all I agree with you..the movie was good..set out to do what it was supposed to, and did a good job of it. I give them props for coming from a unique angle with the already overplayed superhero movie.
I did say just a tad clichéd. :P
ReplyDeleteI meant the whole nerdy boy gets hot girl subplot and Hit Girl/Big Daddy's quest for revenge for a prior betrayal.
The rest of it was pretty original.
When i first sat down in Deluxe to watch it, i did think "ok this is gonna be like Superbad, just full of american teens wanking off and gettin into trouble" ... then Hit Girl busts thru a window and kills 10 men in a 5 min orgasmic display of Girl Power and all i could say was "whoooooa wtfomgcrapmypantsawesomenesswhothehellisshethisisnotpg13!!!!"
ReplyDeletecompletely blew me away, loved it. liked how Aaron grew some balls in the end with the rocketlauncher. about time he did something to contribute :P.
Yeah, he was so useless it was actually laughable.
ReplyDeleteWell, he was pretty good at getting punched in the face, but I doubt that qualifies as a superpower...