MOVIE REVIEW: KICK-ASS

KICK-ASS

Six of Seven Cows

I’ll admit it: I can be amazingly dim sometimes. Having seen the trailer for Kick-Ass, I assumed it was a kid’s movie. There were make-believe super-heroes, ninja action, and kids. Why would I not think this was a kid’s movie? Well, my first clue might have been that it’s named Kick-ASS. Oh, and it’s rated R. Believe as I might that our culture is on the fast-track to Hell, I can’t claim that this particular hand-basket wasn’t well-labeled.

Any notions of innocent kiddy-fun disappeared within the first thirty seconds of Kick-Ass. Crude dialog, scatological humor, and adolescent sexual references disabused me of any notions I might have had. And, frankly, I couldn’t have been more relieved. I’m not a kiddy, nor do I have any, so children’s movies are not my thing. I am neither easily-offended nor squeamish about violence, and am definitely more prone to hop onboard for a hand-basket ride than is seemly for someone of my advanced years.

My only concern in this regard is that it be made easy for parents to make appropriate movie choices for their kids, so allow me to state the obvious: Parents, if it has the word “ass” in the title, and the main character is not a donkey, it may not be appropriate for the munchkins.

So, what is Kick-Ass? Easily the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater in recent memory, that’s what. When teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) decides that being a super-hero requires no super-power beyond epic self-delusion and naiveté, he embarks on a hilarious, painful, and constantly surprising course that’s as violent as Inglorious Basterds and as crassly-funny as Superbad.

Nicolas Cage is at his unhinged-best as a deeply-tormented ex-cop who possesses not only the coolest weapons room since Men In Black but the most disturbingly-violent adolescent daughter (Chloe Moretz) in movie history. Mobsters, high-school bullies and geeky friends fill out the cast in fine style, though most do not survive to the end of the movie. Should this be so much fun? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

I think I’ve covered the child-appropriateness of Kick-Ass, so parents consider yourselves warned: This is not a kids movie. What it is, however, is fresh, funny, malevolent, mischievous, vaguely disturbing and off-the-wall fun for the eternally-adolescent, and easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past year. In short, Kick-Ass does. I give it six cows.