Kick-Ass is the product of a one-night stand between Napoleon Dynamite and Quentin Tarantino. Don’t ask me how I know that and don’t get me wrong, I liked it…a lot actually. Once I figured out that it wasn’t the routine spoof on a comic book-eseque flick, and it wasn’t your standard-fare superhero movie, nor was it another addition in the teen attitude-flexing category, or a….well, you get the picture—it’s just kind of out there shopping around for a genre to fit into. It’s funny at times. It’s over-the-top violent always and filled with plenty of the typical teen stuff. It’s a teen superhero flick gone, well, real. It was actually refreshing to see a teenager turned superhero who was more concerned with getting laid than living out his utopic worldview—which, again, let’s face it, is: REAL.
Dave (Aaron Johnson) is your typical comic book nerd—yeah, original, right…but hang in there, it gets better. He’s got his nerd posse who has never seen a broad daylight mugging they didn’t like, or expect. Which is one of many things that prompts Dave to say, “You know what, why doesn’t someone just really be a superhero?” Therefore, he emerges as: Kick-Ass, helping wayward kittens and trying to put a stop to car thievery, et al. Trouble is, it takes some semblance of talent, supernatural or otherwise, to be a superhero. Unfortunately, Dave has none.
With that, we see our would-be/wannabe hero flopping around on the scene with great popularity while real superheroes begin executing a plan to catch the bad guys. Sure, Dave is still around—playing gay as some master plan to get those rocks erupting with his crush (Lyndsy Fonseca)—but Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and his side-kick daughter, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) move center stage from there. Plot unfolds…plenty of blood shed (good guy and bad guy) and yadayadayada, it scores 4 stars on True’s ole movie scale.
Aaron Johnson is good. Not his best role, but it’s clear he’s trying to take up the gauntlet left vacated by legend Heath Ledger as an offshore acting talent trying to make it big in Hollywood. He even uses a quirky voice thing to accentuate the nerdy Dave—so much like Heath’s voice ticks in his Ennis (Brokeback Mountain) or Joker (Dark Knight) portrayals. As for the rest…yeah, Nicholas Cage has gotten on my nerves since National Treasure and Bangkok Dangerous, and he lived up to that billing as Big Daddy. Chloe Moretz was solid as Hit Girl. Admittedly, it’s a little painful watching a 10-year old, little girl cuss in a similar fashion to what we would hear if Bob Knight got hit in the gnads. But—she did okay with what she had.
Well—I won’t say that’s my latest effort at avoiding the lawn, because I just finished mowing the sucker. Thanks for reading…
True
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