Screen Machine

Review: Kick-Ass

What does it mean for a film to “kick ass?” Turning to my dictionary, I see that to kick ass—that is, to be kick-ass—is to be “forceful, vigorous, and aggressive.” Urban Dictionary, of course, sees things a little differently. There’s 339 votes up, 27 votes down for “cool, great”; 159 up, 8 down for “incredibly awesome”; 132 up, 13 down for “cool or pleasing to you”; and 85 up, 10 down for “awesome, chill, cool, fun, exciting, daring.” It’s in the space between these two sets of definitions that Matthew Vaughn’s new film operates—that curious arena where what Webster’s defines only in terms of force is given, in the hands of Urban Dictionary’s predominantly male, under-25-year-old users, moral and aesthetic ramifications: kicking ass is good.

I wrote that introduction a few days ago, and since then I’ve been having trouble deciding just what to say about Kick-Ass, a film that manages to deftly reframe the categories of its own critical reception—does it kick ass? okay then, problem solved—thus making it, for the critic, something of a slippery fish to catch. In a way, this reframing is nothing special; it’s the kind of thing lovers of action films do all the time, applauding a film for “kicking ass” to the extent that, as Urban Dictionary shows, that ass-kicking becomes the sole determinant of a new kind of criticism, one that cares more about “action” than things like plot, characters, etc.

But by being so upfront, Kick-Ass seems to indicate that it wants to be considered on different standards—or, perhaps more accurately, it kind of wants to have it both ways. You can see it and think it kicks ass, and that can be enough. But be aware that Kick-Ass also knows (or at least thinks) it kicks ass, and that knowledge is key, an entryway into the strangely self-conscious world the film brings into existence.

Consider, for example, the nearly ever-present voiceover, read by star Aaron Johnson (who plays Dave Lizewski a.k.a. Kick-Ass). The first few seconds (minutes?) of the film were absent in the screen cam I downloaded, but my cut begins with Johnson talking about “movies, TV shows” and wondering why no one ever makes themself a costume and just starts fighting crime. This beginning voiceover plays as we see a caped superhero jump off a tall building and soar downward to their death, to the laughter of whatever audience was present when my copy of the film was taped. “That’s not me, by the way,” Johnson quips, as we see the collapsed superhero and the totaled taxi they landed on. That’s right: the voiceover here is not so much a part of the world of the film as it is, almost literally, a commentary on the film. Or, maybe, the world of the film is itself divided, between the “real life” of the narrative and the even “realer”—that is, more direct—reality of the voiceover.

So, as it begins, Kick-Ass is very much invested in occupying some “real world”—a world where superheroes “don’t exist,” a world where a high school teenager like Johnson can’t get the girls to look at him (despite his Harry Potter-esque good looks), a world so average and normal and so just like our own that Johnson’s high school is named after Millard Fillmore, that unique American president whose name is almost onomatopoeically mediocre. “Like most people my age, I just existed,” Johnson says.

But Vaughn takes things too far, giving Johnson a dad so catatonic and monosyllabic that he reads as more of a parody of “everyday life” than a part of that life. Millard Fillmore High School exists on that same level of parody—not only is there no Millard Fillmore High School in the entire United States, but the only other fictional school with that name comes from “The Brady Bunch.” For the film’s opening scenes with Johnson, then, we are dealing with an “average reality” derived from “The Brady Bunch.” Without this reference, we might almost be able to accept these scenes at wholehearted attempts at making a movie that begins with a “realistic” premise, but it’s this crucial bit of intertextuality that reveals Vaughn as a filmmaker with no interest in even engaging with “realism.”

Next, of course, come the superhero parts. Kick-Ass rather quickly introduces us to Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), a loving family with tons of money who are free to spend their time learning how to kill people, and the decidedly un-amicable Frank D’Amico, our villainous crime boss. This transition is crucial, as the entire comedy of “Kick-Ass” seems to arise from the collision between the mythology of the superhero narrative and the “real life” narrative that opens the film—an unknown superhero plunging to his death for comic effect, Big Daddy’s seemingly unwitting impersonations of Adam West-era Batman, Kick-Ass and his sidekick/frienemy Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) listening to Gnarls Barkley in Red Mist’s car.

There are more “jokes” like this, too—they’re more like additional bits of intertextuality, like that “Brady Bunch” reference. For example, listen closely during the final battle scenes for a clear rip-off of Three Doors Down’s “Kryptonite”—which, after all, is a song about what happens when Superman is too old to save the world. Is this where we are right now? Has Hollywood drained all our original superhero stories of life to the extent that we now need a film world without Superman, a world where only films hawking “real” superheroes—”real” to the extent that their powers are acquired rather than somehow supernaturally endowed—can survive?

I’m intrigued by this possibility, but I don’t think Vaughn gets it quite right here. He’s still not over the old superhero films, the ones he borrows from and lovingly parodies, to make a film that stands on its own. Kick-Ass posits a “real” world, one without “superheroes,” but then proceeds to fill that world with the exact same kind of superheroics that populate every other superhero film. “Kick-Ass” is too busy quoting and referencing—too busy elbowing me in the ribs—to remember that it’s a film. I like a film that talks to me, one that’s engaging, but after all, watching a film is mostly a one-sided experience. After hearing Aaron Johnson talk to me for two hours, it’s annoying that I can’t talk back, except to write something like this, which doesn’t do much for really starting a dialogue, you know?

So, to summarize—and I only feel the need to do this because I started this off with all that stuff about what “kicking ass” means—I’d say, Kick-Ass is pretty forceful, vigorous, and aggressive, but it’s not that cool or great or awesome.

Sam Kaplan studies film and art history at Haverford College.

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