Kick-Ass

I managed to catch one of the “preview” screenings of Kick-Ass this evening. Surprisingly, the cinema wasn’t packed despite the huge hype and positive reviews. After watching, I think it got the audience it deserved…

Kick-Ass

“Okay you c**ts… lets see what you can do now!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: geeky teenager becomes non-super-powered superhero Kick-Ass… and lands himself in a world of trouble as a result.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a nerd. A geek. A comic book dweeb. Who one day wonders why nobody has ever tried to be a super hero. Not that they should, just with all the source material out there why hasn’t someone actually patched together some lycra and gone out crime-fighting?

So he does.

And he’s monumentally crap at it. Which, in honesty, is far more entertaining than someone actually being good at kicking criminal backside. It certainly leads to some very brutal slapstick.

On the other side of the coin are Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz). Both highly skilled and dripping in cash, they’re more Batman and Robin-esque. Only somewhat happier to eviscerate the opposition than Bruce Wayne ever was. Or crush them. Or blow them up.

Kick-Ass has its moments, and a ton of references (some subtle, some not so) to past films, TV series and comics. The action sequences are frenetic and bloody, the jokes sometimes humorous but a lot of it is down to shock value (like a small child using the “C” word). So if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll not laugh as hard. Nor will it really stand up to repeat viewing.

It’s fun. It’s just not as fun as I was expecting or hoping for. Still, it’s a good adaptation of the original comics, even though it’s slightly less violent (seriously). Don’t expect a masterpiece and you won’t be disappointed. And it’s good to see Cage in a superhero film that’s not crap. Not to name any Ghost Riders or anything.

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