KICK-ASS didn't quite live up to its name

Rating: 6/10 (17 August 2010)

From a plot stand-point, the selling item that would be pitched to producers, although on this film a studio did not initially buy into the project forcing Director/Screenplay Writer Matthew Vaughn to self-finance until completion, KICK-ASS is a wonderful fantasy that deconstructs the current comicbook movie craze: what if a normal Joe donned a costume and fought crime? And for the first act, this fantasy was made real possessing fun characters, true-to-life violence and a glimmer of fantasy that movie magic can do so well.
Vaughn, no stranger to either movie magic or true-to-life violence, crafts a lightning-quick story around Aaron Johnson's Dave Lizewski, a comicbook fan who is tired of being kicked around (by girls, by street thugs, by his own inadequacies) and decides to kick back. As a costumed super hero, though, Dave learns that his costume alone doesn't provide him with any added immortality, and proceeds to get kicked some more.
Enter "real" super heroes Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz). And exit any of the real-life experiences. Big Daddy, a cliché of a framed cop, has a surplus of weapons, money and machismo. Hit-Girl, the Robin to Big Daddy's Batman, has Trinity's moves from THE MATRIX and an arsenal stolen from James Bond. Together they – wait for it now – attack the Mob, killing stupid goombas each more spectacularly and violent than the previous one. And they befriend Kick-Ass. The film continues with Kick-Ass getting the girl and saving the day after a sacrifice of ultimate proportions is made.
Raise your hand if you've seen this before.
This current comicbook-movie trend, which is now 10-years-old if you consider Bryan Singer's X-MEN film from 2000 to be the progenitor, is nothing more than a sub-genre that feeds from a much larger branch that has been entertaining fanboys and muggles alike for decades. Westerns, war stories, cop flicks, sword-and-sorcery, science fiction and even 80s action films are all morality plays where a hero, be it John Wayne, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis, stands up and occasionally takes a kick in the face before defeating that ultimate evil. Comicbook movies do just that, albeit with colorful costumes, but when done well, makes that costume believable and even non-existent as it is the character that drives the story.
The first act of SPIDER-MAN is widely regarded as the perfectly-outlined origin story. Love, loss and learning all play part of Peter Parker – the Character's – development. Peter becomes what drives Spider-Man. Ignoring Peter's 45+ years of development over that of Dave Lizewski's, KICK-ASS focuses on a potentially fun character and his all-too human impetus for donning a mask. However, as is evident in Dave's ongoing monologue, he questions why real-life superheroes don't exist as he tries to become one. But just as real-life superheroes don't exist, neither do real-life superhero films.
Vaughn's film is fun to watch but ultimately is a comicbook movie – and a generic one at that. One that ends as foul-mouthed spectacle existing in a universe where 11-year-olds such as Hit-Girl would never be a hero in a Stan Lee story.