Weird but Effective

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2010)

Kick-Ass (2010)
*** (out of 4)
Dave (Aaron Johnson) is a loser in high school that does nothing but read comics, hang out with his loser friends and that's pretty much it as he couldn't get a girl to look at him even if he had money. One day he gets the bright idea to become a superhero but of course he doesn't have any special powers but his alter ego Kick-Ass hits the streets where he going to get beat to a pulp but soon a father (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter (Chloe Moretz) show up to lend a hand in bringing down a gangster. If you take this movie very serious then you're probably going to end up hating it like Roger Ebert did. I really can't blame anyone for not wanting to watch an 11-year-old girl kill multiple people and getting beaten to a pulp. Seeing kids killing or being abused isn't very entertaining but there's just something so weird, surreal and rather original about this movie that it works somehow. I personally can't think of another movie like this one and that's something hard to find and that reason alone makes this a must-see as long as you can put up with the subject matter. I think what makes the film work so well is that it really does take place in a real world where our "heroes" wear the funny costumes but they don't contain any super human strength or special powers. As much as one can enjoy comic book movies it's always common sense that you're watching something fake. That fakeness is pretty much taken away here and we're left with a rather realistic movie that manages to work because of how natural it is. I loved the scenes early on when Kick-Ass first goes out to clean up the streets only to get his head bashed in and nearly lose his life because he's simply not tough. It gets even better when the kids soon begins to build his strength as he finally gets the girl of his dreams only because there's a rumor going around school that he's gay and she wants a gay best friend. Even funnier is a few earlier scenes where Dave, soon to be Kick-Ass, talks about his pathetic life, which is nothing more than comics and looking at porn. All of these scenes come off very realistic and I thought the movie did a great job at making sure the characters here were humans first of all. It's the human aspect of their actions that makes the story work and without this you'd be left with something not nearly as impressive. I really enjoyed Johnson in the lead role and thought he made a very believable dork as well as a believable action hero. Moretz and her dirty mouth clearly steal the film as she also gets the best costume of all our heroes. Cage doesn't go as over-the-top as you'd expect but it's fun seeing an actor of his type in this kind of movie. I'm sure a long article could be written about an 11-year-old girl who kills without feelings and one whose father taught her to kill but I think that would be missing the point of the film. This wasn't meant to be any psychological drama about kids and violence so if you're unwilling to laugh then it's probably best that you skip this film. For me, the images were rather dark but at the same time they were rather playful, real and most importantly they were funny.