“Kick-Ass” (2010) has the game pieces in place but loses the game. It’s colorful, for sure, with the green scuba-suited titular teen, the purple-haired 11-year-old Hit-Girl, McLovin coming over from “Superbad” to play Red Mist, and Nicolas Cage chewing scenery as Big Daddy. But director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn, who perhaps learns some lessons here before helming the excellent “X-Men: First Class” one year later, delivers a two-hour film that feels like four hours because it never finds the right pace or tone.
Why are there no real superheroes?
Based on the 2008 comic book by household names Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., “Kick-Ass” – co-written by Jane Goldman – starts with a good question. Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) asks in a voiceover why there are no real-world superheroes. There are real-world supervillains, after all.
So he decides to become one. On his first outing as Kick-Ass, he gets stabbed in the stomach and run over by a car. After a too-short time jump, he’s back at it, with his damaged nerve endings being a strength rather than a weakness. Dave even compares himself to Wolverine. “Kick-Ass” loses interest in its “real-world” idea much faster than I did. (For a much better exploration of what a superhero might be like in reality, see “Super” from the same year.)
“Kick-Ass” (2010)
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Mark Millar
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloë Grace Moretz
Damon Macready/Big Daddy and his daughter, Mindy/Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz, stealing every scene), are slightly more plausible because they are tech-based. Using money stolen from drug lords, they fund their arsenal of weapons. And unlike for Kick-Ass, it’s personal for the Macreadys, because Damon’s wife died at the hands of organized crime.
Naturally humorous
Is it supposed to be humorous that Mindy Macready has the same name as a (now deceased) country star? Is it a play on her name, with “ready” emphasized for the sake of character description? I can never tell if “Kick-Ass” is supposed to be a comedy.
It has some whimsy, but it’s not melded into the flow very well. The most smile-worthy bit – at least conceptually — finds Dave bonding with classmate Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) because she thinks he’s gay and she’s always wanted a gay BFF. This is an admittedly clever way to get close to an otherwise inaccessible girl.
Meanwhile, there’s something naturally humorous about Dave’s friends Todd (Evan Peters, before he hit it big with “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) and Marty (Clark Duke). But they don’t get any funny through-lines, unless it’s supposed to be funny when Katie’s friend Erika (Sophie Wu) warms up to Marty.
Since Christopher Mintz-Plasse had played comedic roles up to this point, it makes me think Chris/Red Mist is supposed to be funny. But he’s really not.
Unexamined violence
Another thing I don’t know what to make of is the violence. In one of her showcase action sequences, Hit-Girl – expertly trained by her dad in martial arts – wades through a room of drug dealers, killing them with guns and a sword. At one point she cuts off a dude’s lower leg with one swipe. It’s too stylized to take seriously but too bloody to laugh at.
Admittedly, “Kick-Ass” has oddity value by giving us an 11-year-old girl superhero slicing through bad guys. And the fact that Hit-Girl is the more experienced superhero than the older Kick-Ass is unusual, too.
But in the end, “Kick-Ass” is a more interesting movie to think about than it is to watch. It’s poorly paced, with long lag times between the action scenes, which are competent but not great. Kick-Ass narrates but doesn’t say anything we don’t already know. It’s not quite funny, not quite serious. It features things not found in any other film, but more as a checklist than as something organic.
The upside is that I like Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl and am now armed with their origin stories. So I’ll check them out in the sequel, 2013’s “Kick-Ass 2,” hoping for better.