Tool up, honey bunny

Rating: Null/10 (22 May 2011)

"Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total a**hole? We're all a**holes now." – Douglas Coupland
Asses get their asses kicked by asses in "Kick-Ass", a film by director Matthew Vaughn. An attempt to take your routine super hero origins formula and push it into hipper, more "offensive" territory, the film is nevertheless wholly tame, trying so hard to be shocking and transgressive that it's almost cute and docile. Like a puppy.
Like most postmodern films, "Kick-Ass" trades entirely in irony. You don't watch the film, so much as your neurons and synapses light up after spotting incongruities. Isn't it ironic that a 10 year old girl is killing adults? Isn't it ironic that gun savvy kids are in a R rated movie? Cue endorphins.
Most super hero movies are power fantasies. "Kick-Ass" is thus appropriately structured as both the masturbatory fantasies of a dweeby virgin who fondles himself in front of his computer screen, and the dying dreams of a comic book junkie. In other words, the kid's the audience. In this way, like most postmodern, self reflexive films, "Kick-Ass" manages to pointlessly mock exactly what it is (think "Sucker Punch"), exemplifying what Robert Pfaller calls "interpassivity", performing our indictments for us whilst allowing us to consume with impunity.
Some have condemned Vaughn's film for sexualising a ten year old girl, but the film's fan-boys brush off such ridiculous notions. She's just an empowered gal. You know? Like Wonder Woman, but without the always displayed boobs. In truth, violence always has a sexual element and vice versa. Today, most interactive gaming terminology – gaming now being the modern equivalent of violent action movies of yesteryear – utilises jargon rife with blatant sexual connotations (teabagging, raped!, owned!, hardcore mode, f****t, etc). Domination, possessiveness, sex, submission, bullets, perforations, superheroes, guns, little girls, Kleenex. They all overlap. Fanboys disagree? They threaten to ***k you up? Offer to prepare the lipstick and lube while they think of a better choice of words.
"Kick-Ass" is praised for its mental action scenes and total bad-ass badassery. Ironically, most of these action scenes – especially "Kick-Ass's" climax – are derived from Luc Besson's "Leon", another film about prepubescent hit girls, Lolita complexes and big, gun-toting men. Also an influence is "Kite", an X-rated mid 90s film with underage hit-girls who routinely get raped. The film was banned for being child pornography, which led to it being edited and re-released. Today "Kick-ass" looks like "Kite" with less balls, which is ironic, considering all these films are essentially about the insecurities of castrated little fan-boys.
5/10 – Worth one viewing.