
Stupid Face Dorkus Malorkus could have been a better title
dir: Matthew Vaughn
2010
Can a movie about comic book-like heroes satirise comic book heroes and movies about comic book heroes at the same time?
No. It cannot. Because all it becomes is another movie about a comic book hero, with the satirical elements flying over the heads not only of the audience but also of the people making the damned thing.
Kick-Ass is based on a comic of the same name by Mark Millar, and, in the creator’s own words, it was really meant to be a scathing attack on a younger version of himself who dreamed of being a costumed crime fighter way back when he was reading Batman: Year One for the first time.
The problem with this premise is that the story doesn’t so much satirise the zero-to-hero wish fulfilment fantasy comic writers and illustrators have pandered to since the dawn of time, so much as fulfil it. A director making a porno satirising the bad acting, cheap production values and orifice-stretching of other pornos is still ultimately making a porno.
Kick-Ass is a different kind of porno, but it’s porn all the same. It’s unlikely to result in as much smelly wadded tissues, but it is the same as what it pretends to ridicule.
This doesn’t make it entirely without merit. It was a modestly amusing way to spend two hours. It is in no way a brazen, wickedly funny slap in the face to the superhero genre and its fans that it pretends to be. Not by a fucking longshot. And I have to wonder just how awful a writer Mark Millar is going to become considering the hackwork he’s been responsible thus far that has led to some pretty stupid flicks (this and Wanted, which is the dumbest fucking flick made in a donkey’s age).
Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a likeable enough nerd, but, like many nerds depicted on the big screen, has an aura of desperation and seems to have the odour of stale semen wafting off of him. Being as obsessed with comics as he is, he decides he’s going to make a costume and fight crime. He has no fighting skills, no abilities of any note, and no weapons apart from some oversized dildos (or regular sized for all I know, I’m not up with what current expectations are out there) that he keeps strapped to his back.
We’re supposed to see him as a pathetic chode, but a likable one, whose scrappy desire to do good far exceeds his ability. The problem is that whatever intelligence he possesses, he seems more like a dangerously deluded fuckwit, not too dissimilar to the lunatic shown at movie’s beginning, who throws himself from tall building’s top.
The difference is, at least initially, that Kick-Ass, as he calls himself when he dons the green and yellow wetsuit, has a lot of Facebook friends, and has videos of himself not fighting crime on YouTube. Wow, how down with the kids and contemporary this flick is. Next he’ll be Tweeting on his iPad while beating up Snooki from Jersey Shore.
Despite being completely unsuited to the task, he becomes something of a celebrity, and inspires others to follow his example, and incurs, unintentionally, the wrath of the local crime lord Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).
All very implausible, I know, but the writers of this stuff explicitly state that we’re supposed to think he’s an idiot for getting himself into this situation, and not a role model worthy of emulation.
Far more emulable are the ‘real’ heroes that turn up when Kick Ass is on one of his missions: Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) is a child who kills brutally and swearingly. Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) is her deranged vigilante father, who dresses up kinda like Batman and uses a certain voice, in costume, meant to recall Adam West at his gayest.
Yes, Nic Cage is fucking nuts, and yes, most of his films and performances now suck, but he and Hit Girl are the best thing in this movie. And, oddly, his relationship with Hit Girl, twisted as it is, is the only genuine one in this emotionally and intellectually retarded film.
They have the weapons and the skills, and the requisite level of demented incentive to take on the city’s criminal underworld, with the intention being achieving vengeance against D’Amico for framing Big Daddy and ruining his life.
You’d think the flick would be saying it’s fucking nuts for anyone to dress up as a superhero and fight crime, or at least that it’s not a sane pursuit, but clearly, in the way it goes so far out of its way to depict Big Daddy and Hit Girl as awesome killing machines, it’s saying nothing of the sort. You can’t have your cake and fuck it too, Millar and Vaughn, you just can’t.
Big Daddy views Kick-Ass with contempt, but sees the value in using him as a cat’s paw to draw out D’Amico. In one of the film’s few funny moments, after watching the video where Kick Ass is getting the shit kicked out of him, Cage intones, using that hilariously disturbed voice and inflections “He – should – be called… Ass… Kick… instead.”
In one of the classically hacky plot devices shit of this kind relies on, when Dave is stumbling into lethal criminal encounters, he is simultaneously pursuing a relationship with a girl from his school who’s convinced he’s gay. Instead of killing him when she finds out the deception, she thinks it’s all sweet, and decides to have sex with him.
Now we know we’re in fantasy land. That seems like the least plausible part of a flick that includes people exploding in walk-in microwaves or jetpacks with machine guns and rocket launchers that come as standard.
I am really in two minds about the whole thing. It’s one of the more retarded wish fulfilment fantasies to come out in the last few years, but there are moments that I enjoyed. The violence is over the top, but so it should be. The way that it’s all put together clearly implies, even when they’re being deliberately provocative (the mouth on that Hit Girl!), that they are trying to make it look jokey and hacky to make it look less serious.
You can’t take a flick like this seriously, or at least you shouldn’t, but it still feels like the mentality of the people who put it together deserves to be mocked more than the people they think are worth mocking, being their primary audience.
It’s like they’re saying: “You dateless wonders, basement dwellers and otherwise socially inept fanboys and girls are intellectually arrested, as proven by the fact that you like superhero stuff and stories that idolise violence and vigilantism. So here’s a flick mocking you for liking this stuff, for which we’re ethically and morally blameless, because we’re just giving you what you pathetic slavering dogs want.”
It’s a wonky argument, and one that should dog these cretins (I mean director Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar, not the actors) for the rest of their days. Millar’s only real contribution to the hallowed halls of the comics genre has been to up the mindlessness and ultraviolence in a field that was always replete with both. It’s a dubious honour to be the Michael Bay of the comics world, but it’s a mantle that he should probably wear with pride.
As much as I might not want to, I still enjoyed it somewhat, and liked the performance of the lead, because he’s a nice enough chap, and though the ending tries to destroy whatever made Dave / Kick Ass likeable and relatable, I’m still not utterly convinced that the flick is without merit.
What that merit is… is still elusive to me. It’s not a complete wash, that’s all I’m saying. Any time Nic Cage puts in an enjoyable performance, in such an outlandish role, is worthy of at least some interest on my part. He and Chloe as the psychopathic father – daughter duo seem like they should have been in a different flick, but all I can watch, enjoy or review is the flick I saw, not the flick it could / couldn’t have been. I doubt, considering the source material, that there could have been a better adaptation, so I guess we’re supposed to be grateful that it wasn’t absolute shite.
Look, it’s not Watchmen, but it has its place on the shelf. A shitty place, but a place nonetheless.
6 times they shouldn’t have changed the true origins of Big Daddy’s character if they really wanted to stay true to the theme of shmucks wanting to be gods instead of clods out of 10
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"With no power, comes no responsibility." - Kick-Ass mission statement, boyo.
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