Kick-Ass

[Compound]

Pshaw.  Back in my day (2004) we had capalert to make fun of, and we didn't need anymore silly movie review websites! Damn kids.

[ScottotD]

I looked at Sceen it awhile ago, and I honestly thought it was a joke...is it really meant to be serious?

Yeah, there was even a guy who did the same thing for rifftrax WAY back in the early days.  Sometimes I really don't understand people.

[TeamRAD]

Let's bring this up, it's showtime in 90 minutes!!

*dances in chair*

[Relaxing Dragon]

Back from my screening. Short version it was pretty good, but I don't think it quite lived up to all the hype.

Main problem was it felt pretty empty. Had the fights and people being superheroes and all that jazz, but it was one of those situations where there's just no substance. Most of the characters were pretty flat, which made it pretty hard to care about them. Kick-Ass especially, since I just found him to be pretty annoying. Also, he had one sub-plot that just bugged the hell out of me.
The whole thing of him pretending to be gay to get with the girl (may not have started out that way, but he went along with it). I hate when guys do that, it's one of the most douchbaggish things you can do. Insult to injury that he gets the girl anyway.

Still, it definitely had plenty of good parts. Hit Girl and Big Daddy were both very sweet and easily the best part of the movie. They had all the best battles (including an ending sequence that's pretty awesome), and most of the funny moments. Hit-Girl especially was pretty damn cool, even if the whole Oh-look-a-12-year-old-is-swearing-how-edgy thing got old really fast. By and large the humor of the movie worked, and it was fairly entertaining to watch. I also liked that it fully embraced how ridiculous things were getting, and just went nuts with everything by the end.

In the end, it's definitely a good movie. A good, enjoyable, fun movie. But (and I get the feeling I'm in a small minority here), I just couldn't embrace it. It was one of those movies where I've seen it once, and I'm done with it (another example off the top of my head is Superbad). I guess it didn't... get blown away by it. It's main shtick is that it's younger people doing really violent things. I guess I'm just really jaded, but that doesn't impress me. Fun, but not really intense. But what's important here is that most folks should still enjoy it, and it's definitely worth watching.

[TeamRAD]

"Show's over, motherfuckers."

Hit-Girl's gonna be an icon!

Was it worth the hype? It exceeded it for me. It's a thrill-ride, and the price-of-admission's worth its weight in gold w/ Hit-Girl's rescue of Kick-Ass & Big-Daddy. It's a spectacle, and one-of-the best orchestrated action sequences I've ever seen. It's SO wow. Oh, and Cage doing an Adam West impression is also a spectacle for obviously different reasons. Hit-Girl's quotes were intact too, especially..."Wotta fuckin' douche." 

It's definitely a loose adaptation of the comic; Dave's true motivation for creating Kick-Ass was never mentioned (the perfect combination of loneliness & despair), but I'm definitely okay w/ that as it would clash w/ the overall tone of the movie. But on the other hand, I did wish any semblance of a relationship was established w/ his father. In the comic, his dad's truly an awesome guy who's searching for solid footing since his wife's death, and looks out for him. It really was a wasted opportunity, and would've added  a humanizing element the narrative was sorely missing. With that in mind, the sequence in Book #2 when Dave envisions the apparition of his mother chastising him for being selfish for not realizing if he dies, his dad will be alone, would've been so super and unforced. That alone had Dave hanging up the wetsuit temporarily, and it would have been a neat moral conundrum to explore on Dave's behalf in the movie (in the comic, that conundrum's only explored for probably 15 panels...so Vaughn's off the hook) . However,  I'm kind of baffled Vaughn & Goldman hadn't adapted the above into their screenplay; running time sure wasn't an issue.

One small thing I do want to touch on yet regarding missed opportunities is w/ Mindy, she was all kinds of awesome in the movie, don't get me wrong, but in the comic, there's pathos established within the character's steely & cocky demeanor w/ her yearning of wanting a regular family again. Even w/ the angle they took w/ her mother in the movie, it would've provided a nice touch seeing the little girl underneath the killing machine her father produced.

And for the wh-wha-what moment in the movie for me; they actually linked Katie w/ the character who was Eddie Lomas in the comics. That was...convenient...and just all kinds of weird. But then again, the majority of the adaptation of Katie was off sans Dave being her gay best-friend.

But w/ all that being said, it's heaps of fun...fuck this, I'm getting the bazooka!!!   

[gbeenie]

Pshaw.  Back in my day (2004) we had capalert to make fun of, and we didn't need anymore silly movie review websites! Damn kids.

Speaking of, here's a comedy blast from the past:

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/southpark.htm

Question for any christians reading this: Is "fuck" really the worst thing a christian could say?


Truth to tell, I kind of feel sorry for CAPAlert guy (despite his use of the royal "we," there is roughly a 0% chance that the "organization" is anything more than one lonely schmuck banging away at a computer keyboard in his basement). Looking at the latest "reviews," I notice they are ALL for movies that have been released on video; in other words, this poor bastard is no longer leaving his house. I guess it speaks to the truism that the signs of deep religious fervor are virtually indistinguishable from the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. 

[PsychoGoatee]

I saw Kick-Ass last night, its true, its kick ass. Nicolas Cage was awesome, it rocked in general, fun flick.

[Tripe]

Pshaw.  Back in my day (2004) we had capalert to make fun of, and we didn't need anymore silly movie review websites! Damn kids.

Speaking of, here's a comedy blast from the past:

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/southpark.htm

Question for any christians reading this: Is "fuck" really the worst thing a christian could say?


Truth to tell, I kind of feel sorry for CAPAlert guy (despite his use of the royal "we," there is roughly a 0% chance that the "organization" is anything more than one lonely schmuck banging away at a computer keyboard in his basement). Looking at the latest "reviews," I notice they are ALL for movies that have been released on video; in other words, this poor bastard is no longer leaving his house. I guess it speaks to the truism that the signs of deep religious fervor are virtually indistinguishable from the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. 

This comment on [urlhttp://www.capalert.com/capreports/benditlikebeckham.htm]Bend it like Beckham[/url] is precious:

homosexual touch

I love that Genesis song!

[a pretty girl is like]

Even though the movie quickly falls apart for me, I think their version of New York is just about the best approximation of the version of New York portrayed in Marvel comics.  The Manhattan skyline, the apartment building rooftops,  the endless alleys and the weird outerborough neighborhoods all meshed together in a really good way.

Also big ups for using the proper name for a balisong, the third best filipino invented weapon behind eskrima sticks and the mighty yo-yo.

[Tripe]

I think Banana Ketchup deserves an honorable mention...

[mearnest]

I saw it yesterday and loved it.  The changes they made were handled quite well.

[wurwolf]

I think Banana Ketchup deserves an honorable mention...

I will agree that banana sauce could be considered a weapon. It's nasty enough.

[iv3rdawG]

It was a ton of fun for 2 hours straight. It feels like a movie that will have a lot of replay ability as well. It mixes in a lot of different genres like teen high school comedies between the three friends, the comic book movie and a twist on the family drama with Hit Girl and Big Daddy all seamlessly. Very, very fun.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

The box office for this has been weak so far....but then, so was Death At A Funeral....

Which makes me wonder.  They were giving away free tickets to Death... at a theater that wasn't close but wasn't far at a used CD store.  Turned it down because what seemed like a glut of commercials for it.  The feeling was that the amount of ads seemed "desperate" and we probably saw all of the good parts already.

And then someone said that Kick-Ass was probably the same with ad after ad....  And that was before the "audience reaction" ads that started just before it opened.  Maybe I'm wrong but those ads in particular always smell of desperation to me.  Like they're selling being part of "the crowd" more than they are the movie.

Or maybe - like the story says - it's just the R-rating that messed them both up.

[mearnest]

The box office for this has been weak so far....but then, so was Death At A Funeral....

Which makes me wonder.  They were giving away free tickets to Death... at a theater that wasn't close but wasn't far at a used CD store.  Turned it down because what seemed like a glut of commercials for it.  The feeling was that the amount of ads seemed "desperate" and we probably saw all of the good parts already.

And then someone said that Kick-Ass was probably the same with ad after ad....  And that was before the "audience reaction" ads that started just before it opened.  Maybe I'm wrong but those ads in particular always smell of desperation to me.  Like they're selling being part of "the crowd" more than they are the movie.

Or maybe - like the story says - it's just the R-rating that messed them both up.

I think Kick Ass is going to be helped quite a bit by word of mouth, unlike Death at a Funeral.  It may do better next weekend.