Go See This Movie!

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2010)

Like many I presume, after seeing the commercials and being dazzled by the bright colors and the pint-sized superhero I'd later learn was called Hit Girl I thought that this was perhaps a children's movie. But don't be fooled, Kick Ass is anything but for the young kids. This is a teen and grown up movie and should be regarded as such for the language and extreme violence.
I really found Kick Ass to be an enjoyable movie. It held itself together reasonable well and I found little that I would've done differently. Mainly just toning down the most extreme violence and the sexual innuendos neither of which is my thing, and particularly the later I found myself squirming in the theater seat and wondering if I was the only one that felt both uncomfortable and like I was watching a throw back to the 80's when movies had that level of cheap sexual thrills.
It was really entertaining watching our main protagonist, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), think he had what it took to become a superhero. Now I guess we know why most all superheroes have powers, some kind of ability or a gimmick. Generally speaking, they'd get their butt kicked if they didn't. While the movie started somewhat slow, and you perhaps couldn't help but roll your eyes at Dave's really cheesy superhero costume it was humorous to see him try and step up.
But it's really Hit Girl (played by Chloe Grace Moretz) that just runs with the movie. Being swept up into the larger story of the running conflict between Hit Girl, Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and big bad Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) you really get the sense that Dave "Kick Ass" Lizewski doesn't know what he got himself into and definitely didn't sign up for the events of the movie; but nevertheless does the right thing by the later part of the movie. The characters of Hit Girl and her father, Big Daddy, take themselves and what they do very seriously. And it's once they appear that the movie really takes on a new life and moves past being perhaps just a cheesy flick. It's the later story, involving these two that holds the entire movie together.
With all going on in this movie, the extreme violence, the sexual innuendos, the perhaps question of is this a movie being marketed at kids to young (reference the colors) and whatever else I find it funny that critics take exception with the foul language (and one word in particular) uttered by the Hit Girl character. With everything else going on a single word is what the critics focus on? Perhaps they could've cleaned up her language some but they didn't have anything else to say about the movie? Chloe Grace Moretz will be known for this movie. She will undoubtedly go on to a great career in movies if he continues barring a really bad bomb of a future film. Perhaps I'm not alone in thinking that a Hit Girl centered movie would be a great idea, but would it be a sequel or a prequel? (I'd vote for either) The problem though (and probably why you'd have to go with a sequel) is that Ms. Moretz made this film almost two years ago when she was only eleven, and as seen most recently on the Tonight Show plugging this movie, now at age thirteen she's really grown and changed from her character Mindy "Hit Girl" MacReady. I applaud her for being a child star but wanting to skip the age appropriate, pop-corn fluff that is usually written for children and saying to the motion picture industry that kids and do action also.
The only real problem I had with this movie was Katie, Dave's crush and ultimately to become his girlfriend. From crush to girlfriend is fine. But she sends Kick Ass to talk some sense into gang members causing her trouble and they don't explain how an innocent enough looking girl has some kind of relationship with a den of drug dealing gang members? Talk about a hole in your script and a lack of detail.
KB