Flawed But Fun

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2015)

I watched this last night and had an absolute blast with it. Even if you takes Kingsman only at face value and see it purely as a riff on Bond movies, it works incredibly well. Matthew Vaughan brings such verve and energy to his scenes that it's difficult not to be caught up in the flow and I love the little touches, such as the way he uses a snow globe in a London flat to shift scenes to a remote frozen mountain. Jane Goldman also deserves due credit for her script, which is a lot sharper than many others which have tried to do the same thing. I've never read the comic on which this based but, if nothing else, she turned something that a lot of people apparently disliked into something that should have widespread appeal.
I really really liked Colin Firth in this and it's been a while since I could say that about him. I think the surprise factor is another reason why this movie worked so well for me – I was genuinely surprised at how excited I got when Firth showed up on the screen. I will admit to letting out a genuine sigh of disappointment when he got killed and I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the audience. I should have seen that scene coming. It's pretty essential for almost apprentice-mentor story when the mentor is killed and the apprentice must rise to the occasion. And yet I didn't. Or at least I didn't want to.
It's a testament to Taron Egerton that I was as invested in Eggsy's story as I was. Amusingly, there were a group of boys not dis- similar to Eggsy in my cinema row and I initially wrote them off as potential disruptions to my cinema experience. It probably didn't help that the first trailer was for Fifty Shades Of Grey and so they laughed quite loudly at it (which is, well, understandable). But, once that movie began, they didn't make a sound (other than laughing in the right places) and, after it finished, I heard one of them declare that the movie was "pretty sweet" (which I assume meant that he liked it). I think that's a good parallel for the movie which suggests we're all so much more than what's on the surface. As a Brit, the discussions on class probably said a little bit more to me than they would to some international cinema-goers. My friend, who saw the movie with me, argued that Eggsy should have been black, which I dismissed because then it would have brought race into the mix and that's a whole different kettle of fish. Eggsy needed to be white to show that he was the same as everyone else in that room, bar the circumstances of his birth.
Also: How great was it to see Mark Hamill back on the big screen, but wielding an English accent? I was oddy giddy about that.
This was actually my first visit to the cinema this year and it was a great way to re-introduce myself to the experience. I have Jupiter Ascending lined up for next week and, if it's anywhere near as enjoyable as this, I can see 2015 being a good year for myself and cinema. As one of my audience members remarked last night, that's pretty sweet.