'Kick-Ass' Review

Kick-Ass is probably one of the most interesting movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It isn’t really a drama, it isn’t really a comedy, it isn’t really all action, it’s just kind of there. But not in the bad way like a closed McDonalds, but rather it actually blends all of those genres into something much grander.

Kick-Ass is the story of Dave, a gawky teenager who sucks at talking to girls and has two friends who are just as socially inept. One day, Dave decides to become a superhero. No reason. Just for the fuck of it, basically. He doesn’t have superpowers and his costume is a flamboyant wetsuit and Ugz. Like any perfectly sane teenager, he names his superhero Kick-Ass, and despite the fact that he clearly gets his ass handed to him on several occasions, he still finds a way to get famous, prompting two real-ish superheroes, a father-daughter pair, to court him. He then continues to fuck everything up, blah blah blah drama.

You see, Kick-Ass isn’t your average superhero movie, at least at the start. It’s a very real look at a kid who decides, just for the fuck of it, to become a superhero. It explores the consequences of such exploits in the most brutal, gut-wrenching ways possible.

First thing’s first: ­Kick-Ass is rated R for a reason. There’s blood. Lots of it. Some of it hilarious. A scene where a mafia squealer is put into a giant microwave (I’m not kidding) makes the whole film look like something out of the mind of Quentin Tarantino. It’s darker than the cute and colorful posters make it seem, and most of the humor is cruel (but still pretty damned funny).

Aaron Johnson plays Kick-Ass, the title character. He has glasses, a jew-fro, and jerks off multiple times a day (seriously). Nicholas Cage plays Big Daddy and is surprisingly adept at his role, remaining likeable all while shooting his daughter in the chest (seriously). Hitgirl, played by Chloe Something, is one of the movie’s more interesting characters, and also seems to be the most brutal, going around and chopping off drug dealers’ legs (seriously). And finally, we have Red Mist, who’s played by Mclovin (seriously.) And no, I will not refer to Mclovin as Christopher Mintz-Passe because that would be like referring to Spongebob Squarepants as Tom Kenny. He’s Mclovin, dammit! And he always will be.

As the story progresses, things become much more complex as the lines between heroes and villains are blurred even more so than they were in other “gritty” superhero movies. Every character in the film is innately likable, even the ones we know are douchebags, which actually creates this very satisfying emotional connection to them. The consequences of Kick-Ass’s actions are far reaching, and the film, though on the surface but a gory slasher, actually provides a very intelligently written social commentary on friendship, relationships, and the social order all while never taking itself too seriously, resulting in moments where I actually laughed. I never laugh in movies. Checkmate, Kick-Ass.

I do have a few complaints, however.

First of all, the movie sort of spits in the face of its own “anyone can be a superhero message.” Consider this: Mclovin is only a “superhero” (there are quotes for a reason but I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it) because his father, who’s also the film’s main villain, gives him a few hundred grand to buy a costume, website, and tricked out Mustang (I still think Mustangs are girls cars, though). Hitgirl and Big Daddy are superheroes because of their seemingly unlimited access to bazookas and machine guns. And finally, Kick-Ass is only a superhero because he got fucked up in a parking lot and had metal plates installed in his bones, making him impervious to most pain.

What the fuck? I thought the message of the movie was “Anyone Can Be a Hero” not “Anyone Can Be a Hero as Long as They’re Rich, Have Access to Unlimited Heavy Weaponry, or Have Bones Made of Fucking Titanium.” Thanks, a lot Kick-Ass. There I was ready to don a cape and mask and go around fighting crime in Radford but then you go and laugh in my face and tell me I can’t. Looks like the closest thing I’ll ever come to being a hero is providing the last ten bucks for a fresh keg at a party. Oh well…

I’m also a little pissed off that the title character is actually the least-interesting character in the movie, yet we’re stuck with him for pretty much 80% of it. He’s boring, nerdy, with no family problems and his only redeeming quality is that he pretends to be gay to pick up girls (I wish I could pull it off, but I’m just so damned hetero). I don’t want to watch someone just like me for two hours, that’s boring, I can watch myself at home. It’s like watching a (hetero) porno that focuses more on the guys than the girls. I have a penis, I can look at it anytime I want. That’s not why I’m watching the damn thing! That’s what Kick-Ass does. It has five primary characters, including Mark Strong, who plays a fantastic villain in the form of Frank Domico and the father of Red Mist, yet the movie sticks us with the least-interesting one for two hours.

Mclovin is actually the most complex character in the whole thing. Even now, I’m still not quite sure what side he’s on (it’s actually been bothering me). His motives are originally evil, as he’s planning to lure Kick-Ass in so his father can execute him, but then a friendship blossoms, a friendship he’s obviously been craving, but then there’s betrayal, but then there’s just who-the-fuck-knows. He may be good, he may be evil, he may just be trying to impress his dad, who obviously loves his son (the chemistry between Mark Strong and Mclovin is great; they really do feel like a true father-son dynamic). I can’t even imagine what’s going through Red Mist’s mind, and the result is one of the most authentic characters ever in a superhero movie and it’s disappointing that he isn’t more fleshed out.

I cannot believe I’m saying this, but Kick-Ass is probably the most emotionally resonant superhero movie of all time. I mean that. More emotional that even the immortal The Dark Knight. The characterization is great, the action scenes are bloody and fun, and the story is satisfying to the very end. Go see it. Now.

Also, Hitgirl, call me in about six years, sweetpea.

'Clash of the Titans' Review

Ah, Clash of the Titans. The movie we’ve all been waiting for since the previews started dominating commercials during The Office. A remake of a movie that sucked 30 years ago must be good, right? And better yet, it’s directed by Louis Leterrier, a director known for raping The Incredible Hulk and starring Sam Worthington who had a hand in destroying the Terminator franchise. It can’t miss!

Clash of the Titans starts with horribly-rendered CGI coffin rising from the sea and being pulled up by a fisherman, Roland Tembo (The Lost World: Jurassic Park was on TV the other night, you have to be a nerd to understand the reference). Roland opens the coffin to find a dead girl and a baby, whom he raises as his own and then meets a horrible death about 25 years later (which is about 5 seconds in movie time), prompting the baby, Jake Sully, to go out and take revenge on the gods for killing his family. Then we meet the gods, who are composed of Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, and some other random people who don’t matter. It turns out that gods are whiny, attention-loving bitches and have decided that the best way to get people to like them again is to kill them in the most horrible way possible. I believe there are people like this on Criminal Minds.

So Jake Sully elects to join a band of macho warriors lead by La Chiffre from Casino Royale and are too lazy to work out (they wear body armor in the shape of abs...that's cheating) to kill the Kraken, who’s played by the Cloverfield monster. See, the Cloverfield monster, back before his days ravaging New York and killing 20-somethings, was a pet of the gods who went around fucking up cities whenever the gods felt like they weren’t getting enough attention.

Apparently.

This is a review and I don’t really like to go into details about the plot so I’ll simply sum up the movie in one sentence: Clash of the Titans is a fucking mess.

You know that 10-page paper you decide to write the night before its due and bang it out in 20 minutes after a brief Google run? That’s Clash of the Titans. It’s a messy jumble of random scenes stitched sloppily together into a premise that feels about as logical as one of those creepy anime movies. There’s a random semi-hot girl who follows Jake Sully around for no fucking reason other than to tell the audience the back story that Louis Leterrier is too lazy to actually show us. There’s about as much action as we saw in the 2-minute preview. The actors are practically reading their lines off of cue cards. And to top everything off, I’ve seen better special effects in those cheap movies on the Sci-Fi channel.

By about halfway through the film, right about the time that Jake Sully cuts his way out of a giant scorpion’s stomach, you start to realize that the movie’s slowly beginning to dissolve into a vat of stupidity. I can always think to myself, “Okay, it’s going to get better. As soon as the monsters show up, it’ll get better.” Well guess what: it doesn’t. For a movie that promotes itself with giant monsters battling gods it sure as hell doesn’t show us much of it. You know that shot in the preview where the Kraken opens its mouth and roars for two seconds? Well that’s about as much of him as we get to see before it’s gone. Seriously.

Forgive me for stealing a joke from Family Guy, but I was under the impression the name of the film was Clash of the Titans not Random People We Don't Care About get Killed by Random Monsters we Don't Care About.

Louis Leterrier doesn’t seem to care about the movie and as a result neither do we. Jake Sully’s family’s literally on screen for about five minutes, with the mother and sister never uttering a single line, and we’re expected to actually give a shit when they die. There’s a princess who, if she’s sacrificed, will end the Kraken’s wrath. And for some reason, despite the fact that she has maybe two or three lines, we’re supposed to feel something for her. If I was one of those guys in the town about to get destroyed that bitch would be going down. Zeus is supposed to “love” humans, and the other gods remind us of it constantly, yet at the same time he has no trouble killing them with a smile on his face. What the fuck? Either you hate humans or you love them, you can’t just switch whenever it’s convenient for the script. The characters, for the most part, are disposable and the few that we do actually get to like are killed within seconds. There’s one part of the film where they invade Medusa’s lair and one of the movie's most likable characters is killed in the corner of the f*cking screen while the action’s focused on Jake Sully. Fuck you, Louis! You made me sit there for an hour and a half watching these characters and then you wipe them out without so much as a second thought.

The movie doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. The acting’s stiff, the script’s a mess and the visuals aren’t much better than those seen in Xbox games. Sam Worthington plays the exact same person he played in Avatar and Terminator Salvation and Louis Letterier’s direction is totally careless. There’s a scene where a bad guy’s hand is cut off and it's seen turning into a monster. I’m thinking, “Oh shit, that’ll totally turn into a huge monster and kick some CGI ass!” Nope. Doesn’t happen. It’s never mentioned again. It’s like Leterrier completely forgot about it because he was too busy figuring out how to make all of the actors’ skirts shorter.

Why is it that certain directors get to keep making multi-million dollar movies even when their movies suck? In professional sports, if a player has a bad game they either A) get benched or B) sign with the Raiders. Shouldn’t it be the same way in Hollywood? If Louis Leterrier obviously can’t direct a good movie to save his life then stop fucking paying him for it.

Clash of the Titans is lazily shot, horribly written, and sloppily directed. It isn’t worth the film it’s printed, let alone two hours of your life. Do yourself a favor and just rip up some man-cards and go see How to Train Your Dragon. Trust me, it’s far more badass.