Kick-Ass Movie Review: If You Think This Movie Is Funny, Please Seek Professional Medical Help

The opening, depicted in full in the trailer, shows a man wearing an odd costume with wings standing on top of a New York skyscraper. A voiceover talks about fantasy of wanting to be a superhero. The man leaps from the ledge and plummets head first toward the street below while the crowds cheer. He slams full speed into a taxi cab – dead. This brief sequence is a microcosm of what follows.

I really wanted to like Kick-Ass. Really, I did. I thought the trailer showed great potential for ironic satire. I followed with bemusement the minor uproar over the filthy language that comes out of the mouth of Hit Girl, an eleven year old superhero played by Chloe Moretz. Then the reviews started coming in and some critics were put off by the violence inflicted by and on that same young girl. I thought maybe some of these critics were simply old codgers who were no longer in tune with the hip. Then I saw it and I never thought I would have this reaction to a movie in my life: This movie is morally repugnant.

It’s not fair to say that director Matthew Vaughn fails at anything in particular in terms of craft or storytelling. He fails at being decent to humanity. He doesn’t quite know what kind of movie he wants this to be and that upsets the balance between taut comedy and intense violence. The shifts in tone are as brutal as the bone-crunching punches and kicks that both Hit Girl and the eponymous hero (Aaron Johnson) whose alter ego (come to think of it, which persona is the alternative?) is a high school geek named Dave Lizewski.

Dave doesn’t decide to become a superhero for any of the classic reasons – revenge being chief among them – but mainly because he’s bored and curious. In the age of the Internet, incessant viral videos and the 24 hour news cycle I guess he couldn’t find enough to keep himself occupied. After donning a wetsuit as his costume he goes out and tries to stop some neighborhood thugs who regularly shake him down on his way home from school.

Up to this point, the movie has a freewheeling and fairly lighthearted tone. Then Kick Ass faces the harsh reality of a 150 pound weakling trying to take on two street criminals. Expecting a bit of a beating, I was shocked when he took a knife to the stomach that left him bleeding to death as he stumbled in front of a speeding car that sent him hurtling through the air. Sadly, I think we’re meant to laugh at this scene of quite serious violence against a teenager.

His recovery leaves him with several metal rods holding his skeleton in place and damaged nerve endings making him less vulnerable to pain. So he decides to go back for more.

Eventually he meets Hit Girl and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), two highly skilled…assassins is really the only word for it because they are not heroes by any stretch of the imagination. What they do is commit cold-blooded murder in the name of revenge over a complicated back story I won’t get into here. I repeat: This eleven year old girl commits murder with various weapons, all the while spurred on by her father so he can live out his revenge fantasy. The only hint of a moral calculus comes from an old friend of Daddy’s who tries to encourage him to take proper care of his daughter. The film has absolutely no concern for the psychological trauma that would be inflicted on a young girl who regularly slashes throats, puts bullets in brains and generally behaves like a younger version of The Bride in Kill Bill.

One harrowing scene has Kick Ass and Big Daddy held captive and videotaped, eerily calling to mind those lovely al Qaeda beheading videos. The screenplay by Vaughn and Jane Goldman adapted from the Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. comic book has the gall to play this scene for laughs. I can only imagine, but I’m certain this was the case, big laughs coming here. The video, which is broadcast live on TV news, suddenly stops because of the violent images. Everyone watching quickly jumps to their computers to find the live Internet feed. I think Vaughn tries to use this sequence to inject a bit of social commentary regarding the public’s voracious appetite for the latest Internet fads. But you can’t condemn the public’s bloodlust while reveling in the glory of ultra-violent images. That’s not ironic, it’s hypocritical.

And as if it weren’t enough to bathe in blood and dead bodies, there is a subplot that involves an awkward conversation between Dave and his father that serves to compound the stigma that victims of sexual abuse face. After Dave’s hospital stay his father believes (because Dave didn’t want the secret of his costume to get out) he was found naked. This leads him to ask Dave, without really asking, if he’d been raped. First there’s the panic on Dave’s face and then the relief from Dad that he wasn’t. But instead of the kind of relief that says, “Thank God my son wasn’t sexually abused,” it says “Thank God my son isn’t gay.” And of course this situation leads to a rumor that Dave is gay (because of course not only are sexual abusers gay, but so are their male victims) which is also played for laughs as he uses it to win the affection of a girl at school who tells him, “I always wanted to have a friend like you. Is that homophobic?” Note to Vaughn and Goldman: Yes, it is! So is the absurdity of having her stand half naked in front of him while he rubs tanning lotion on her. Because that’s what gay men are good for and all women should have a gay best friend for just such purposes!

To be fair, the half of the movie that doesn’t involve Hit Girl and Big Daddy had the potential be a very funny and endearing comedy about a socially outcast teen who gives himself a boost of self-confidence by dressing up as a superhero. This is one of the few screenplays that really hits the mark spot on when it comes to teen dialogue. It’s just a shame that it was wasted on such a depraved story.