"Kick-Ass": They're Not Who We Thought They Were

Rating: 4/10 (25 April 2010)

"Original" and "Unconventional" seem to be the common words used to describe "Kick-Ass". The movie climbed to the number one spot in the box office opening weekend, climbed up the prestigious IMDb Top 250 Movies of All Time, and has climbed into the hearts of moviegoers across the country. Unfortunately, all of this, especially the premise of the movie itself, is completely misleading.
A painfully mediocre high school student wants to make a difference in his own dull life and in the violence-ridden streets of his own city. Our antihero wants to become a superhero. The story starts off on the right note, getting us engaged and bringing on some good laughs in the process. He has no revenge story, no Martial Arts training, no money to get a hold on any cool gadgets. However, what begins as an "unconventional" and "original" superhero story, takes a turn and becomes the same typical, cliché, and generic superhero story it intends and claims to drift away from.
By some freak accident, he acquires a damaged nerve system that significantly decreases the sensation of pain, and even gets some cool metal plates integrated into his skeleton. Cool! Like accidentally getting bitten by a radioactive spider.
Then he meets Bid Daddy and Hit Girl. People love Hit Girl, and what's not to love? She's an 11-year old kid who can say bad words, dodge bullets, and kill a dozen bad guys at once. People say this movie has no gimmicks. An 11-year-old kid who can say bad words, dodge bullets, and kill a dozen bad guys at once is a total gimmick. Big Daddy is a supercop with a vendetta and Hit Girl is his daughter who has learned everything a supercop knows. They have a revenge story, and even have a ton of money which allows them to buy a bunch of fancy new weapons. Cool! Just like Batman.
Sure there may be some entertainment value in it for you, (if you're into a couple masturbation scenes and an 11-year old girl getting shot at) and the acting is convincing enough, given the ridiculousness of the story. The movie only falls short in being something other than what it claims to be. "Kick-Ass" is not "original" (see Blankman) and is not "unconventional" (see Spider-Man and Batman).
The last I checked, at the bottom of the Top 250 List was "Toy Story 2," which is more than a hundred spots short of the place "Kick-Ass" landed so quickly. If you want to see a movie that's a hundred times more original and unconventional than "Kick-Ass", see the movie that's at the bottom of the list.