Bedroom? Batcave? Same diff.
By Jonathan Kiefer
Kick-Ass
comes to us with a little bit of built-in controversy. Its title alone—at once an adjective, an imperative verb and a proper noun—might strike some joyless fussbudgets as a touch too syntactically cavalier or just plain impolite.
But, as a matter of fact, it’s not just ass. It’s chest and face and groin and extremities. And it’s not just kicking. It’s shooting, slicing open, blowing to bits and popping like grapes. So you could say, in comparison to the movie itself, the title deserves thanks for its good manners and restraint.
The movie itself is vividly silly and self-debauching. Kick-Ass concerns a teenage comics geek and wannabe superhero (Aaron Johnson) who sets out to become an actual superhero, called Kick-Ass, but becomes a viral-video curiosity instead—which, in its insidious way, is close enough. Nicolas Cage gets involved along with Christopher Mintz-Plasse, in a part potentially even more enduring than his turn as McLovin in
Superbad
.
Another memorable character is Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), who is at least partly responsible for any Kick-Ass controversy. It should be pointed out that for many years now movies have seemed to enjoy requiring un-little-girl-like behavior of little girls; indeed, there has been at least one other lass of about the same age using similar language on screens recently, in Fish Tank.
But she is of the English working class, with fewer advantages and no privilege of cartoonishly stylized serial homicide. So perhaps that’s different.
There is also some murky, blackly comedic commentary about a special brand of social isolation that results from all the shallow posturing of online life. But mostly Kick-Ass concerns itself with the kicking of ass and the aforementioned related actions.
It’s hard to know—or care, really—whether all of this is innocently cynical or cynically innocent. Kick-Ass does have a peculiar transgressive appeal, at least for those viewers who might say to themselves, “Ah, excellent—I’ve been waiting so long for a film in which one of the characters is an 11-year-old girl who calls people cunts and then kills them very violently!” Others will be glad these viewers aren’t likely to rear children of their own anytime soon, on account of not having access to mates.
As I watched Kick-Ass, I noticed that a young guy behind me in the audience kept saying “What the fuck?!” The Hit Girl scenes in particular really seemed to set him off. And he had so many different inflections: delighted, astonished and occasionally mortified.
He kept on saying it, and the film kept on provoking him.
If Kick-Ass has a target audience, I figure this guy must be it. It’s fun to imagine him telling his friends about what he saw that night.
Maybe even more fun than the movie itself.
