Movie review: Kick-Ass

[seriousfic]

So yeah, I watched it. Long story short, it's a fun mindless action movie. Not the best thing to happen to a movie camera since Wild Things (you know the scene I'm talking about), not a sign of America's decay into a barren wasteland where disputes are settled in the Thunderdome. It's just a good movie. It has interesting characters played competently by good actors (all of whom are given that all-important ounce of humanity by the script), some groovy action sequences, and a level of wit to it. But it does make some missteps that keep it from being higher than a seven out of ten. Still, it's a hard-R action movie with no shakycam. In a world where John McClane calls people 'numbnuts' instead of 'motherfucker', an 11-year-old girl calling her enemies cunts deserves to be applauded.

I realize there's some controversy there because, yes, Mark Millar is an asshole and it's only right to not want to support assholes (but where were you when Avatar was the number one movie of all time?). So if that's not your thing, here's a picture of Helen Mirren proving corsets are for mere mortals.



Back? Good. The thing is, I'm assuming Matthew Vaughn came at the story from an entirely different place than Mark Millar. He said to himself "let's make a fun, violent action movie that audiences will love, so we get paid lots of money" and ended up with an affectionate parody of the superhero genre. Whereas Mark Millar's philosophy is something like "this is shit and you're shitty for reading it, but I am awesome for pandering to an audience I despise." He's something like a stoner trying to get fired by continually dissing the customers. Any heat he has, he brings down on himself for not only his attitude, but for doing meaningless shit instead of using his talent for something that matters. It's like if Francis Ford Coppola had made a bunch of good movies and accumulated lots of power and then decided to make some porn films. Man, you're better than that.

However, and this is a big however, Vaughn's change-up also hampers the movie by robbing it of any clear theme. It never decides if it's a dark comedy, a sly action-comedy, a gritty revenge drama, or a dozen other genres it fiddles with for a moment and then puts down. Now, I like Spider-Man 2, and in that movie a man watches his beloved wife die before his eyes and then kills a woman by dragging her to her death as her fingernails rake trails in the floor, followed by a musical number. But there, it all fits under the umbrella.

Kick-Ass doesn't have that umbrella. When Hit-Girl flies around knifing people, the movie has no idea whether it's supposed to be badass, horrifying, or funny. Ambiguity is a good thing, but I have a feeling Hit-Girl is only there because she's in the comic, not because she's an organic part of the story they're trying to tell, because they don't know what story they're trying to tell. In Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock and John Jameson were in the cast because their characters amplified the message the filmmakers wanted to send.

There's a point in Kick-Ass where the characters and the situations are still ridiculous, but there are no jokes and the music is all tense and you're like "wait, I'm supposed to take the plight of an eleven-year-old ninja seriously?"

It's as if halfway through Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks realized they had run out of jokes, so he had the Waco Kid get shot and die in Bart's arms, then had the rest of the movie play as a straight-up cowboy flick. The romantic subplot in particular is just unearned. This is where the protagonist's lack of motivation bites them in the ass. Making a point of how he really doesn't have any reason to be a superhero would work in a comedy, but here, he just monologues about 42 for a while before some more baddies die.

So I really wish that before making the movie, maybe while they were planning out all the disembowelings and decapitations, someone had stopped and asked "Wait, what are we trying to do here besides be entertaining?" Maybe that's peevish of me, but hey, they started it.

Comments

[rann.livejournal.com]

I think it's just expecting too much to demand that a Hollywood screenwriter and/or director inject meaning into the meaningless.

I mean, stripping off the layer of sneery condescension is no small feat in itself, especially in Hollywood. Wanting them to go the extra ten miles and actually figure out something else for it to be once they've stopped it from being a middle finger might be a bit like saying "Okay, you've turned the water into wine, but while you're at it why not improve the vintage and make the cup a little nicer too?"

[tgirl78.livejournal.com]

I thought the movie was better then the comic. I really liked how they changed around some of the scenes and usually that would bother me if it was done to another comic. Having said that, this movie is HIGHLY entertaining, and yes, mindless, but it makes it so much fun! XD

[(Anonymous)]

But . . . but it was SO entertaining! I mean, I saw what you saw, but at the end of the day watching Hit Girl knife people and get into a fistfight with Mark frigging Strong is hilarious and entertaining even if it is not thematically consistant.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

. Whereas Mark Millar's philosophy is something like "this is shit and you're shitty for reading it, but I am awesome for pandering to an audience I despise."

[insert standard-issue MCity Warren Ellis joke here]