Hilarious But Cheesier Than What It's Supposed to Be

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2010)

This is definitely a great popcorn film and something you can surely watch with all of your teenage or young adult friends for a good laugh. On a critical level however, there were several flaws that prevented the movie to be "awesomely perfect." This film was based on a graphic novel and as usual, the books are always better than the movie adaptations. If the movie had even more similarities with the graphic novel, it would have been far more enjoyable and trust me, even more hard-core.
The film tries to create different action scenes from the book which some worked and some sucked. An example of what worked was in the scene where Hit-Girl used night vision goggles to save Kick-Ass and Big Daddy, the POV shot was crazy and clever. What didn't work was the the big surprise that the movie was building up for... a jet pack. When I saw that I was thinking, "Seriously Hollywood? Did you really need to include that?" It made the hardcore action suddenly turn corny, which is something the graphic novel most definitely is not. It would've been better if Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass fought off the bad guys at the end with grittier weapons like the swords, the pistols, and the two sticks like in the book instead of a bazooka and a jet-pack.
I'm not saying the violence was bad, much of it was really bad-ass and awesome, but could've had a much better ending. Also, I was able to relate to Kick-Ass initially because he was a dork with big aspirations that always crush his hopes and desires; something we've all experienced. However, I lost that feeling once he actually gets the girl! What the hell? He basically turned into another Toby Maguire Spider-Man because he got the girl! The story would've been much more interesting and relatable to the audience if he didn't get what he wanted.
This film is very enjoyable action-comedy; I think Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy and Chloe Moretz as Hit-Girl were awesome. However, the movie really turns into another super-hero fantasy instead of being a film mocking that fantasy which would've been a much better approach. In short, Definitely check out the graphic novel if you ever get the chance.