Kick-Ass

I had some reservations about this movie after reading Ebert's review of it when it first came out.  Overall, though, it wasn't bad.  It is violent and sometimes gory--like when someone's leg gets cut off with some kind of spear thing--so you really don't want your young kids seeing it.  Mostly it works best if you consider it a parody of overly violent comic books/graphic novels that have cropped up in the last 30 years or so.

When it starts out Dave is pretty much like Peter Parker in the first Spider-Man movie, only with average intelligence.  After getting mugged (again) he decides to buy a wetsuit and somehow gets some batons and decides to go out and fight crime.  Though you'd think that a comic book fan would realize you can't just go put on a costume and fight crime, not unless you're an alien (Superman) or in some freak accident (90% of Marvel heroes).  Or maybe if you get doped up on steroids (Captain America) or undergo years of ninja training (Batman) or find a suit of magic armor (like this).

But he doesn't, so naturally he gets his butt kicked.  Still, after he manages to drive off some gang members and it's caught on video, he becomes an Internet sensation.  This annoys a real superhero calling himself Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) who's been a lot smarter about it by keeping on the down low while training his young daughter Mindy how to be a deadly ninja assassin called Hit Girl.  Big Daddy's been trying to knock off a gangster who put him in jail years ago and operates a lumber business.

Things get more dangerous for Dave when the gangster wrongly thinks that Kick-Ass is responsible for a raid on his operation that was in fact carried out by Big Daddy.  The gangster's son (the McLovin kid from Superbad) sets a trap by becoming a "hero" called Red Mist.

It all becomes your typical over-the-top comic book-type story from there.  Again, if you don't take this very seriously then it's fine.  For instance, the Hit Girl character pretty well illustrates the creepiness of kid sidekicks.  I mean, do you really want a bunch of prepubescent ninja assassins running around?  That scares the hell out of me.

Otherwise the only real complaint would be that Nicolas Cage sucks up another superhero movie after the terrible "Ghost Rider."  The cheesy child molester mustache is bad enough, but then in Big Daddy mode he does his Adam West impersonation as well.  It would have made more sense to impersonate more modern Batmen like Michael Keaton or Christian Bale--not George Clooney.

Basically if you're a comics fan or superhero movie fan then this is pretty entertaining.  In some ways not as good as the Woody Harrellson vehicle "Defendor" I previously reviewed, though the effects are probably a little better.

That is all.

My score:  65/100 (2.5 stars)

Metacritic score:  66/100 (2.5 stars)