First, let's discuss why I recognize each of the listed cast members, as I find that recognizing actors in movies can make them more enjoyable (especially with this type of movie). Aaron Johnson is the lead in this movie, and to be honest, that's the only reason he's on there. He's not been in much else. So moving on.
A sleek, lean Mark Strong plays the villain in this movie. I recognize him very strongly from Stardust (the first movie I remember seeing him in) as Septimus, but he's also been in Sherlock Holmes, Body of Lies, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Tristan + Isolde, and he's apparently in the upcoming Robin Hood as well (yay!). He looked really good in this movie. I mean, not like, mmmm-he's-tasty he looks good (he is bald in this movie, after all), but he seems to have some nice lean muscle under his tailored suits. I don't know, I just like looking at a fit man.
And let me digress back to Aaron Johnson. My first paragraph writes him off like he's inconsequential. Perhaps I should note a few of the things in this movie, his first big role, that I liked. First, he plays a total geek but you can tell when the glasses come off and the curls move off his forehead that there's a secret chiseled hunk hiding under there. Also, it takes a confident man with a good body to be able to parade around in a thin green wetsuit for most of the movie, so he's in pretty good shape. He's got just the body type I like, lean but still obviously fit. You can tell I like looking at that type of body when I even mention that 47-year-old Mark Strong looks nice. lol He also played this role really well. He fits the geeky but secretly heroic and handsome role very well. His IMDB page makes him look very full of himself, but perhaps he's still too focused on breaking out to be able to loosen up on the red carpet. He is very lovable in this movie, so I don't know. At least, don't judge him by the pictures on his page, because I don't think he could play this role well if he didn't have at least a little bit of a shy geek in there somewhere.
So back to the other actors I recognized. Nicolas Cage. Of course. He's been in like half the movies ever made. lol I don't want to list them all because then I'd have to find their IMDB pages and link them, but let's suffice it to say that he's one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. This was an enjoyable role for him, because he gets to be Big Daddy, aka real-life Batman, and who doesn't like seeing people you recognize turn into superheroes? lol Plus he had this funny little mustache that I quite liked. Not like, I thought it looked good on him, but it was quite amusing and he seemed to draw inspiration for his character from that funny little mustache.
Chloe Moretz. I don't believe I'm familiar with her, but she's got quite a resume for being such a young girl. She's totally adorable and she acted this part really well, especially considering the mature content, so she certainly has potential.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Okay, you may not recognize his name, but I KNOW you know him. McLovin', anyone? Let's go down the list of his recent teenage-guy comedies: Superbad (absolutely his breakout role), Role Models, Year One, and I just discovered he was also a voice in How to Train Your Dragon. I thought he'd been in about 60 films since Superbad came out in 2007, but it appears that I've just listed almost his entire resume. Hard to believe considering how absolutely recognizable he is. He is as geekily adorable as always, though believe it or not, he is something of a villain in this movie. And can I just mention how weird it is to see him dressed in clean, expensive clothes? He actually looks normal when you put him in a button-up and tailored jeans. It's nice.
And last but not least, my favorite late-night comedian Craig Ferguson was in this movie! For some reason I've been on a Craig kick lately. I have his memoir checked out from the library (it's quite amusing, I'd highly recommend it), he was in How to Train Your Dragon, which I highly enjoyed, I've been watching clips of his monologues on his website lately, and now he's in Kick-Ass! I just really like Craig Ferguson. First, he's hilarious, and everything he says is even funnier when he says it in his Scottish accent. He also seems to have a great love for our country and isn't afraid to shout about it ("It's a great day in America!"), and I find that to be a very admirable trait in a media personality in this day and age. Plus his accent. lol So when they chose to use Craig Ferguson as their late night persona in this movie, I was like OMG It's freakin' Craig Ferguson again! It just made me really happy.
So now that I've discussed the pleasure I got from seeing each of these actors in the movie, let me turn to the movie itself. I was hesitant to go see it at first because I knew it had a high potential for violence. The reviews I had read specifically pointed to the violence, and after my initial interest in the preview, I began to be afraid about what it would really be like. However, today felt like a movie sort of day, so I settled down to watch a trailer for Kick-Ass and for The Losers, and Kick-Ass won by a long shot. They're both the type of movie that I could really enjoy if the violence was balanced appropriately with comedy and a happy ending. Judging by the humor present in the Kick-Ass trailer, I determined that it would have the most potential. Plus I had forgotten just how amusing it looked until I watched it again, so I decided to buck up and just go see it for myself.
What a great idea! I actually really enjoyed this movie. Is it weird that a movie this violent could fit so well in Neverland? It has the heroic transformation of a regular guy into a kick-ass superhero (pun *giggles*), humorous lines, a daddy-daughter combo, a love story, and above all, a happy ending. Sure there was blood squirting everywhere and an awful lot of dead people, but I found that I was still able to enjoy the movie despite all this.
It opens with this enormously geeky kid and his friends hanging out at a local comic book store. Dave (Kick-Ass) asks why no one has ever tried to become a superhero, and his friends laugh. The path is set. He buys a green and yellow wetsuit and mask and becomes Kick-Ass. After a severe ass kicking for which he was on the receiving end, he heals but doesn't give up. If anything, he's more determined to kick some criminal ass.
After his first successful fight is captured on a cell phone video and goes viral on YouTube, Kick-Ass has become a household name. Enter the villain, Frank D'Amico, the drug lord of New York City. His men keep describing a Batman-like man who is defeating them in their attempt to sell drugs, and Frank suddenly realizes that this "Kick-Ass" might be threatening his business. So he starts looking for Kick-Ass.
The Batman superhero is actually Big Daddy, a former police officer framed and jailed by Frank several years earlier. When he got out of prison, he trained his daughter to fight crime with him, and together they vow to bring a stop to Frank's crime ring. It is a bit unnerving to see an 11yo girl gleefully stabbing 5 men in a swirl of skirts and purple hair, but that's part of what makes this such a teenage-guy joyride. That's the type of thing that tickles their fancy--a little blond girl that can twirl a knife (and a samurai sword and a double-bladed sword and a gun as well) better than they can. Hell, better than almost anyone. If you allow yourself to be swept along on the Little Boy Fantasy Express, it's really quite fun rather than disturbing.
Red Mist, who appears to be a fellow generous superhero in the trailer, turns out to be the son of Frank D'Amico, and he only dons his cape and spiky hair to help his father bring down the other heroes. So now we have all of our heroes (or anti-heroes, as it were). Where does Craig Ferguson come in? Well, he's one of the vehicles used to show Kick-Ass's nationwide popularity, and he delivers a perfectly Craig Ferguson-esque monologue talking about Kick-Ass. The fact that I could see myself watching that very episode in real life was what made it so priceless. I mean, there was Craig grinning cheekily into the camera and making jokes like he always does. "Now I know what you're thinking, but I'm not Kick-Ass!" lol So great.
It's these little touches, the parts that make you feel like something like this really could happen, that makes this movie so enjoyable. We've all known geeks in high school, and comic book geeks are a standard of teenage boy geekdom. So when this bespectacled boy decides to put on a costume and march around to stop crime, we could see how that could happen. Plus he's not really going out of his way to look for trouble--on the other hand, you can clearly see his hesitation when he sees a fight break out in front of him because he knows the very real danger of a geeky teenage boy jumping into a knife fight with gang members. But he does it anyway, and this naive nobility is what makes him so lovable. Sure, we all know he should never survive, but thanks to some friends with guns and better training (think Big Daddy and Hit Girl), he makes it through. And sometimes, he even makes it on his own, proving that it really can be worth it to stick your neck out for someone else.
This movie is interesting because it makes you think, even while overloading your senses with gunshots and blood squirts. You pause with the protagonist, thinking to yourself, would I help, would I stop to help the victim, or would I look the other way and keep going? Of course, being the gigantic pansy that I am, I would 9 times out of 10 run screaming in the other direction. But it is very satisfying to watch someone who is theoretically as helpless as you are, stepping forward to try to make this world a better place, one petty fight at a time. Kick-Ass represents all of us who wish we could do something to help, who wish we had the courage to stand up and fight.
So there's fighting and gunshots and knife throwing and lots of blood squirting all over, eventually leading to a very intense climax. I mean, it really wasn't tooo bad considering how much I hate physical pain. In fact, I endured quite well considering the violent nature of it all. Either I'm getting over that inability to watch people get hurt or I had sufficiently disengaged to not be bothered by it. I mean, I won't gloss over the fact that this is a very violent movie, not for the faint of heart or those sickened by blood or violence (one guy even loses his entire leg to a sword swipe), but it didn't bother me. If violence can be tastefully filmed, this was. I've heard Sin City was similar in its artsiness, but I was always too afraid to watch that movie (in fact, it was mentioned in this movie, ironically enough). It's sort of like 300, where you see the blood and that is a very real part of the action of the movie, but there are enough other things to like about the movie that that's not really what you walk away with.
Here's the best example I can give of how this movie's violence isn't the overarching feature you remember: when the movie went to credits, I found I was still grinning. I laughed out loud several times throughout the movie, did a couple forehead slaps, grinned and shook my head--and even did all that as I was walking out of the theater. Only a movie that really amuses you can keep that feeling when it's over. I got into my car and giggled for no reason whatsoever. I had to turn down my radio on the car ride home to savor the amusing, giggly feeling I had leftover from the movie. Was it unbelievably violent and difficult to watch at times? Yes. Did I have my hands up on my temples to make myself feel better? Yes. Did I walk out of the theater practically skipping because it was so amusing? A resounding Yes.
A note about the hands on my head thing: I find that when I'm concerned that something is going to be violent or scary, I put my hands up by my face. The first time I watched Mel Gibson's The Patriot, I had a headache because I had been squeezing my head so much from the violence onscreen. It's the only way I can make it through any kind of suspense. It's like I have to have all my muscles tensed, and I feel best in that position when I'm scared. I can be holding my husband's hand during a movie and actually remove it to put it up by my face when I'm scared. Perhaps it's a vestige of the fetal position? Who knows. If I think back, I spent a fair amount of this movie with my hands either up by my face or clenched tightly in my lap, but still, most importantly, I only think about that when I actually take the time to reflect on it. The humor and moral of the movie made up for the suspense and violence.
In sum, I would highly recommend Kick-Ass, with a few caveats. You must go in with the mindset that you are about to see a bloodbath, albeit artfully filmed. Watching Hit Girl fight can be like watching Neo in The Matrix, but with blood squirting everywhere. You must also be prepared for teenage boy humor--he references jerking off (complete with kleenexes in the trash) twice in the first 5 minutes, but it's not really a raunchy movie. There are some almost full boob moments, but I was glad they didn't feel the need to expose them entirely. It gave the film some dignity that it could reference boobs without actually having to stoop to showing them onscreen.
If you can go into this movie with this mindset, I think you'll really enjoy it. It's funny, with a heartwarming protagonist that looks good in a wetsuit. If you've liked the recent string of college humor movies that have come out, you'll definitely like this one. On the other hand, I hated Superbad and still really enjoyed this one. I find them to be hit or miss with me, but this one was just fanciful enough to tickle my funny bone. I mean really, let's be honest, you can't go wrong with a geek in a superhero costume that genuinely believes he can make a difference in the world. A colorful cast of supporting characters adds to the charm and believability of the film, and its humor leaves you walking out of the theater with a smile on your face.
Let's be honest, you can't really have rainbows in a movie like this, so we'll go with the equines this time: I give this movie 4 ponies.
Rating: (out of 5 rainbows and ponies) 4 ponies
Conclusion: HAPPY ENDING
-PrincessM
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