With Great Fanboyishness Comes Great Responsibility

Rating: 4/10 (9 May 2010)

Everything before the appearance of Hit Girl was at least interesting, after that the head of the movie goes so far up its own ass, it can perform its own colonoscopy, which it then proceeds to do, as what I'm sure some would call satire. Mark Millar's hacky writing that's made him a 5th tier mainstream comic writer is present here as ever. If this is a good adaptation of the comic (which I gave up on after issue 2) then it's a faithful adaptation of a bad book. "Mystery Men" and "Blank Man" with a little girl who calls people a "c&^t" and plenty of references to YouTube-is that what's passing for edgy and original these days...agro Juno? The strain of creatively impoverished Millar writing can be traced from "Wanted", to "Kick Ass" and the Iron Man franchise. For instance, Samuel L. Jackson is in the new "Iron Man 2" because Millar had artists model their new Nick Fury after him in his "Ultimate's" comic's series. When Alan Moore says that modern comics are now just a spawning ground for bigger commercial properties and merchandise, Millar is looking more and more the eager grounds keeper. His books come with headshots in mind.
"With Kick-Ass, the books just out and now the movie's out six weeks later. And I think that's the way things are going to go now, because to go to Marvel's B and C-list characters and try to get movies out them – what's the point of that?"-Mark Millar. I know this is the way Kubrick went about "2001", but this ain't 2001. Concerning, B and C, characters I would gladly take a "Howard the Duck" sequel any day over Super-Bad kid doing the world's worst Batman quote at the end of a movie.
As for Mathew Vaughn as director, "Kick Ass" combines the worst of his last two films; the Guy Richie rip off of "Layer Cake" is now replaced by embarrassingly brazen Tarantino worship, and the stiffeled/self-congratulatory attempts at graphic-novel adaptation in "Stardust" is present and accounted for here. Vaughn financed the film himself, so calling this a soulless studio product isn't accurate or necessary. Bad indie movies get made too...agro Juno is actually more accurate than I suspected when I started writing this.
At the beginning Kick-Ass tells us how he isn't like your daddy's super-heroes no alien origins or dead parents to avenge, no powers or skills etc., but an hour later, were cheering on Hit-Girl's Matrix/28 Days Later/Silence Of The Lambs/Kill Bill reference laden revenge for her slaughtered father, and watching jet-packs streak across the sky. Roger Ebert went too far connecting "Kick-Ass" to Columbine and Virginia Tech. A movie can be bad without being the end of western civilization, and though Kick-Ass isn't very good. Children and Old people swearing will always have produce a knee jerk ironic laugh, like a fat man with high pitched voice, or a short person with a deep Barry White voice, and so Kick-Ass has it's moments of amusement(largely thanks to Nicolas Cage).
With great fan-boyishness comes great responsibility, and if super-heroes have any meaning at all, it should be about more than just kicking ass. If your reply to that "But then what else is there?", then just forget everything I've said, this is the movie for you.