Kick-Ass

So here’s the thing with Kick-Ass: you get rave reviews from everyone but the Daily Mail (if you don’t know, they reckon Hit-Girl encourages paedophilia and the film as a whole condones knife crime and gun crime, even though they’ve given rave reviews to films like Harry Brown in the past) so your expectations are very, very high. And let’s not be negative here, the movie is a whole lot of dumb fun…

The story goes that comic-book nerd Dave (Aaron Johnson) wonders why no-one has decided to become a superhero and buys a costume, transforming himself into Kick-Ass. His alter-ego becomes a living legend when he is filmed saving a man from being beaten to a pulp. Unfortunately, his actions get him into trouble with a local mobster who decides to have him killed off. Meanwhile, Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace-Moretz) and her father Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) hear of his deeds and decide to help him out, since they already have a beef with this particular mobster.

I won’t go any further, I’m not really into giving away the main plot of films in case anyone hasn’t seen it. But really, that’s all you need to know anyway. There really isn’t any deep intellectual thought in Kick-Ass, nor is there any gut-wrenching sentimentality or a tear-jerknig moment. Which is great, considering I didn’t want any of that from this movie – actually, if any of that had been included, I would probably have been less enthusiastic. Really, Kick-Ass does what it says on the tin. There’s a lot of OTT violence, and as I agreed with my movie-loving mate it’s like a Kill Bill for teens.

But there are some good laughs too, not completely hilarious ones but maybe you have to be a certain age (and I’ve realised that’s made me sound really old). I enjoyed the very first scenes with Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, where she worries him by saying that she wants a puppy and a makeover for her birthday. Kick-Ass’s would-be sidekick Red Mist is also stupidly funny – for some reason it’s hard not to laugh when they’re dancing to the tune of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” (which also reminds me, the film has a pretty great soundtrack).

Perhaps the film’s only low-point is the fact that there’s a whole love-interest subplot where the tone is changed and everything gets a little slow-paced. Perhaps ten to fifteen minutes of film could have been cut out from this as it didn’t really add anything to the story (there wasn’t even a conclusion to this segment at the end of the film).

On the whole though, it was truly a great two hours of complete escapism with great casting, OTT fights and the tune to the Banana Splits. What more do you really want from some dumb fun?