Turgid, Humourless, and Soulless.

Rating: 3/10 (15 July 2010)

So, for some time now, Jane Goldman has been the writer du jour for movies of the last five years, not surprisingly to great acclaim from her celebrity husband Jonathan Ross. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us) she has not turned out an original work of her own, but has turned other people's ideas and stories (Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee for example) into screen-friendly fare. So far, so run-of-the-mill.
Now it appears Mrs. Ross, teamed up with Matthew "Layer Cake" Vaughan to really strike out on their own, and produce something they can call theirs and no one else's.
They're welcome to it. If They want to take credit for films they haven't really written, then they can sure take the blame for this.
Was this film supposed to be funny? Because I sure as hell didn't laugh. Well, maybe once. When our eponymous character would rather be discovered naked in an alleyway than in his pseudo-costume. And that was about how I felt at this time. If anyone had called me and asked "Watcha doin'" I'd probably lie, and say, "getting ass-raped by a gang of chavs", rather than admit I was wasting my time with this.
It's not without it's merits, however few and poorly executed. The idea of real people taking up the cape of the "superhero" is maybe not new, but is still an intriguing angle. It's somewhere in the Watchmen vein, crossed with dirty sex comedy. But it's played all wrong. The laughs are not played for laughs ("funny" deaths not funny and played down), and it's impossible to care for a single character, because, with the exception of one, they are all flawed, terrible people.
Nic Cage's Big Daddy is an insidious corrupter of his child, Hit-Girl. While this is addressed as an issue in the film, he learns nothing from it. Neither does Hit Girl. She continues to kill and kill and swear and kill. Also, does anyone remember the old "1001" cleaner adverts on UK TV, in which some kind of pseudo-Batman arrives at a spillage? That's Big Daddy's costume. I swear to God it is.
By the Way, Goldman and Vaughan - Having a 10 year old kid say "C**T" in a film is not edgy, clever film making. It's just pathetic and crass.
There's much I could say about this film. It has no heart, not moral, there's not much of a character arc for our hero, Kick-Ass. In fact, his decision to pack it all in and lead a normal life, after realising he's going to die if he carries on, is probably the smartest thing he does in the whole film. However, he goes straight back in, and learns nothing from his time as a vigilante.
The villain is one dimensional, his son "Red Mist" is just a scared, selfish spoiled kid who wants to play dress up, and uses his crime lord father's predicament to get the resources to. He very sharply turns into super-villain with no warning and no decent cause to.
Simply put - If this were a loaf of bread, it would have the right ingredients for a good recipe, but it's just not ready to come out of the oven. More pre-production work was needed to turn out a better story, flesh out characters better, Big Daddy excepted, the violence toned down a fraction and the appalling language from children erased. Then, this could have been quite a competitive film.