Overall Impression – I’m not sure what liking this movie tells me about myself.
THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Who’s your main character? – Dave.
What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Become a superhero. Personal: Get Katie to love him. Private: Overcome the loss of his mother and the breakdown of his family.
Who’s trying to stop him? – The very, very evil Frank D’Amico.
What happens if he fails? – He and 11 year old Hit Girl will get killed, and the city will be overrun by D’Amico’s evil criminal empire.
THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Orphan – Dave is a social outcast at school, who claims that his only super-power is being invisible to girls.
Wanderer – He decides that he wants to be a superhero and goes about trying to figure out how to do it and not get himself killed.
Warrior – He becomes an internet sensation, and struggles to keep everything together as he realizes that things are getting out of control. In addition, he meets some real (and really nuts) super heroes, Big Daddy and Hit Girl.
Martyr – Realizing that he can’t hide anymore, he needs to believe in his own hype and risk it all to save Hit Girl and bring down D’Amico.
AND, IN THE END…
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Yes, everything you’ve heard about the movie is true: there is an 11 year old girl who kills with abandon, get’s the snot kicked out of her by a 40 year old man, and uses worse language than I ever did, and I grew up in Brooklyn. This movie takes your moral compass and spins it like a top.
And yet…and yet…KICK-ASS is overflowing with a sense of fun and irreverence. It dares you not to take it too seriously. But, is that possible, with cute-as-a-button Hit Girl bloodily killing people with the abandon of a heartless abattoir worker?
I’m confident that KICK-ASS wasn’t trying to inspire moral hand-wringing, but it is what it is. And considering that the movie didn’t perform as well as hoped for in spite of the skill and originality behind it, perhaps this is a good example of underestimating what the market will tolerate.
I’m glad I saw the film, and fervently hope that it doesn’t inspire a raft of similar movies. And I’m not sure what that says about me, either.
– Jeffrey Alan Schechter
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[…] get the idea. Working with a lot less, director Matthew Vaughn really kicked our a**es with Kick A**. Moral compass unease aside, that movie had characters with no super powers, no political […]