Bill Burr was on the Opie and Anthony show once and he told them about a documentary or something about alcoholics. He remembered one particular bit where this drunk talked about going as far as drinking his beer in the shower. How refreshing a simple pleasure THAT must be, Burr thought. And so did I, for that matter, which is why I tried that out today. I took a Heineken inside and made an airtight seal with my DSL wrapping around the rim and tossed it back, cold brew making its way down my throat as the hot water rained down upon on my head. It truly was one of life's most refreshing yet simplest pleasures. See, I'm not an alcoholic because I didn't come up with the idea; I merely heard it secondhand and filed it away for future reference and the future was now and now is time to ramble about a movie I watched last week and am just getting to now.
Kick-Ass is based off a comic/graphic novel/whatever-the-fuck-you-call-them from the same dude who did the Wanted comic. They made a movie out of that shit, so now they're making a movie off of this shit. The movie is about your typical nerdy high-schooler whose philosophy gets all Edmund Burke all-of-a-sudden, so he decides to go out on the streets and become a real-life superhero (minus the super) and fight crime in his online-purchased wetsuit. Along the way, he meets a couple of costumed badasses who go by the names Big Daddy and Hit Girl (who is about 11 years old, by the way) and there's some bald Italian mafia boss who wants to know why these motherfuckers are fucking with his capitalist ventures.
For the past few months, Kick-Ass seems to be to geeks what Obama was to liberals during the '08 elections -- the greatest thing to walk on water since sliced bread. Naturally, this kind of hard sell blah-blah forces you to lower your expectations so low that they end up in fuckin' China. That's what I did and I'm glad I did, because I thought it was an above-average movie but nothing to punch Christopher Nolan in the face about. I mean, I dug it, but this is gonna go up on my I Guess You Had To Be There list alongside Drag Me to Hell because both were screened way ahead of time at geek congregations in Texas and maybe experiencing those flicks in those settings added a lot of special good vibes towards it. Or maybe those flicks are really just That Fucking Good and I'm just a fucking asshole.
One problem was that I really didn't give much of a shit for the main character or his situation. I'd tell you about it, but I don't even fuckin' remember, that's how much of an impression he made. What this movie's really about is fuckin' Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Watching them do their thing is a beautiful symphony of ownage, but the problem is we're not here for the symphony, we're supposedly here for the goddamn acoustical performance of Green Clad Douchebag. But this coffeeshop singer is lame, I want to ask the barista to turn up the T.V. set behind him so I can enjoy the Philip Glass of Killing Criminals. Shit, that's not even one problem, that's my main problem. That's the only problem. But it's a big one.
But not nearly big enough to fuck up the movie or even threaten to fuck it up, it's just kind of a drag when you're not into this Kick-Ass dude as much as you we're into Peter Parker or Tony Stark. Stark is awesome in a smarmy asshole kinda way and Parker's got the nerd angle covered far more interestingly and sympathetically, so, yeah. I guess Kick-Ass Dude is supposed to be a normal person, the Real Thing when it comes to alter egos but if that's the case, then shit, man, like the fuckin' Weasel said in that goddamn masterpiece Encino Man, "Normal's boring".
So it's good that we have Nicolas Cage and potential Natalie Portman having far more interesting going-ons going on in this piece (and I loved how Cage-as-Big-Daddy sounded like Adam West). It's also good that Mark Strong plays the bad guy; he was also the villain in Sherlock Holmes and one of the few good things about Revolver. Both those movies were from Guy Ritchie and this movie was directed by Ritchie's former film producer, Matthew Vaughn. He did Layer Cake, which was awesome and Stardust, which I haven't seen but was told it was awesome (by the same people who were once blind but can now see thanks to Kick-Ass, so I don't know).
Vaughn also wants you to be very aware that he's married to Claudia Schiffer because he has a whole fuckin' scene take place next to a billboard featuring the sexy lass. I mean, Good Work Bro, but that reeks a tad much of showing off. Motherfucker probably goes around at parties constantly introducing himself and his wife with "Have you met my wife, former supermodel Claudia Schiffer?" and even if they've already met, he'll remind them "Oh by the way, my wife's a former supermodel, you know. Her name is Claudia Schiffer. Isn't that right, former supermodel Claudia Schiffer?". Shit man, I don't even know if she's former or whatever. All I know is that she sure as shit ain't sucking MY cock, she's sucking Matthew Vaughn's cock and I'm here alone writing bullshit on a blog and calling both Schiffer and Vaughn cocksuckers for two completely different and wrongheaded reasons. Digression acknowledged.
As awesome as Hit Girl was killing people and looking absolutely pedo-tastic while doing so, I actually got annoyed by her casual use of bad words like Cunt. Don't get me wrong, I don't get offended by little girls swearing or killing people (like Roger Ebert did in his review of this movie -- slightly reminiscent of his pan of Blue Velvet -- so offended was he that he watched the entire film with his jaw dropped) but it seemed a little too much of a Yeah Man, We're Naughty And We Don't Give A Fuck vibe from it. "Look, we have a little girl using words that'll make your grandma shit and piss herself -- more than usual, anyway" is what it comes off to me like and they didn't need that because they already had her blasting and slicing up so many low-lives in so many nifty ways. Actions speak louder than words, people. Unless the words are louder than the actual action you're going to perform, like "Hey I'm going to pull this tissue out of the box" and then you pull the tissue out of the box and that particular action is like, practically whisper-quiet. Whatever, that's not a valid argument, skip that.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse is here too, and the funny thing about his role is that it could've been played by someone far less McLovin and far more McSteamy. What I mean is that I figured since it's McLovin, this dude's gonna be like a real nerdy klutzy type and even the trailer plays up that angle with the part where he hurts himself jumping off a dumpster. But his part is pretty much the James Franco part from Spider-Man, a rich kid with a father he looks up to, and maybe he's not seen as strong or capable as his old man, but he's itching to give it his all in trying. I don't know if his character in the comic was also a nerd or if he was a Franco, but if I can get retrospect armchair quarterback on this shit, they didn't have to make him a nerd for us to visually get the idea that he was incapable of running shit; he's a rich kid, and as we all know, all rich kids are pussies. I know this because I read it somewhere.
I understand the early screening at the AICN Butt-Numb-A-Thon was of a print that used source music from superhero flicks like Superman and Batman, and I swear I also read that they also used that great song November Rain by that piece-of-shit Axl Rose. I don't know if it was just a temp track thing they were doing or if the filmmakers actually tried to use those themes in their movie and maybe the studios/owners of said music were either like "Fuck you, you ain't getting shit" or "Pay us a shitload of money if you want it that bad, and by the way, fuck you", but those compositions didn't make it into the theatrical version, but the music they used in its place sounds enough like those tracks that you get the idea.
Anyway, I liked Kick-Ass but I didn't love it. I took like five paragraphs to get to that one sentence opinion but you probably know how I roll in this motherfucker anyway and should be used to it by now.
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