KICK-ASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

KICK-ASS (Dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2010)


Aaron Johnson, as geeky high school student Dave Lizewski, wonders in a world where millions love comic book and movie superheroes, why don’t more people actually try to become real-life superheroes? His mother has just died, he’s invisible to girls, and chronic masturbating is his biggest hobby (yeah, I know – TMI) so we can see why he fantasizes so vividly about being a superhero. Not letting the fact that he possesses no special powers get in his way he orders a green wetsuit online, dubs himself “Kick-Ass”, and sets about fighting crime on the streets of New York City.

Kick-Ass gets his ass horribly kicked by a couple of petty thugs on his first outing enough to put him in the hospital. He’s not deterred from his superhero pursuits though, because he’s now reconstructed with metal grafts and with his deadened nerve endings he can fight without pain. So when another brawl is captured by camera phones he becomes an internet sensation via YouTube and a household name.

A girl he has a crush on (Lyndsy Fonseca) suddenly takes an interest in him, but as his snarky friends (Clark Duke and Evan Peters) suggest it’s because she thinks he’s gay. Fonseca has no inkling of Johnson’s infamous alter ego when she emails Kick-Ass’s MySpace account (the only aspect of the film that feels out of date) asking for help. A dangerous drug dealer is harassing her at the needle exchange clinic she works at and immediately Kick-Ass is on the case.

However, the pile of bodies that results in a ghetto showdown comes not from Kick-Ass, but from the surprise appearance of “Hit-Girl” (Chloe Moretz). The foul mouthed and fast acting Hit-Girl (who’s 11 by the way) takes no prisoners, killing every attacking lowlife and leaving Kick-Ass stunned. She’s the real deal he sees, and she’s the protégé of another real deal – her father Nicholas Cage as “Big Daddy” whose shiny black costume makes him look like Batman’s brother and he has lethal weaponry out the wazoo to match.

From here out Hit-Girl and Big Daddy steal the movie from Kick-Ass and he never quite gets it back. The villains they all go up against are big time mob boss Mark Strong and his son, McLovin himself – Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who has his own mock superhero guise: Red Mist.

Kick-Ass calls it quits now that shit just got real (not a line from the film but it just as well could be) and comes out as straight to Fonseca – the old pretending he’s gay in order to get closer to her premise you see. Of course, he’s gonna have to get back in the game and join Hit-Girl for the inevitable action movie climax.

KICK-ASS has so many successful sequences going for it that I can overlook the myriad of problems I have with it, but for the record here they are. The satirical nature of the material replaced with predictable noisy bombastic mechanics in the last third, with the laughs sadly fading with the satire. And in the words of Grandpa Simpson: “The romantic subplot felt tacked on.”

That said, KICK-ASS has a great cast – Johnson, Mintz-Plasse, and Strong are all solid and it’s great to see a porn-stached Cage chew up the scenery with Moretz whose Hit-Girl poise, presence and power, as I said before, really steals the show. That is, if you don’t mind the extreme profanity and ultra violence that she brings.

Don’t bring the kids, or even the kid inside you to see this movie; it’s an dark adult shoot-em up with a high body count packaged as a teenage superhero comedy – it’s SKY HIGH as directed by Quentin Tarentino. It might not kick ass as much as I thought it could, but, as it’s the first major movie to use the internet popularized phrase that something or someone “owns”, for the most part it does indeed own.

More later…

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: The Film Babble Blog Review

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
(Dir. Steve Pink, 2010)

A few years ago I wrote about the severe lack of quality John Cusack films over the last decade. Well, I never thought his cinematic redemption would come in the form of something titled HOT TUB TIME MACHINE – which is honestly the funniest comedy I’ve seen since BLACK DYNAMITE and ZOMBIELAND.

Sure, it’s a stupid concept – 4 guys go back in time to the 80’s via a hotel hot tub spiked by a Russian Red Bull beverage called Chernobyly – one that might look like it could be a sci-fi tinged WILD HOGS (which is name checked in the movie) men-will-be-boys comic nightmare of a movie, but it’s seriously a lot of fun.

John Cusack, Craig Robinson (The Office, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS), and Rob Corddry (The Daily Show) are old friends whose lives haven’t turned out the way they wanted. Cusack, in a role that has more than a little of Rob Gordon from HIGH FIDELITY in it, is a control freak insurance agent who has just been left by his live-in girlfriend, Robinson left his musical aspirations aside to work in a upscale pet store and fears his wife is cheating on him, and Corddry, a party boy gone to seed, just tried to commit suicide.

So along with Cusack’s video game obsessed nephew played by Clark Duke (the web series Clark and Michael) they travel to a ski resort they frequented back in the day to give their lives a kick-start, but much like them, the resort and the surrounding town has seen better days. In a great shout out to a much loved 80’s time travel classic (BACK TO THE FUTURE) Crispin Glover appears as a one armed bellhop with a very bad attitude.

Their crazy alcohol fueled first night results in them waking up back in 1986. “Is there some kind of retro thing going on this weekend?” Clark asks as they start to notice the 80’s aesthetics coming at them from every direction. Robinson: “Dude is rocking a cassette player.” He frantically points out more outdated oddities: “Leg warmers! Jheri curl!” Robinson also owns one of the best moments of the film when he and the others figure what happened; his look right at the camera after coming to the conclusion “must be some kind of hot tub time machine” is priceless.

Chevy Chase shows up as a mysterious hot tub repairman who says things that hint that he knows what’s going on then disappears. Clarke determines that they must do everything the exact same way they did it back in ’86 – in the mirror they look like they did as teenagers (played by other actors) – except for Duke himself who hasn’t been born yet. The fact that his future mother (Collette Wolf) is there immediately sparks the most predictable scenario in the film yet it still works.

In fact just about everybody’s arc is predictable but it all still works. What makes it work is the easy going improv nature of the dialogue which I believe will make it one of the most quotable comedies ever. It’s literally overflowing with laughs. There are times that everybody’s yelling something and it’s all funny so you miss stuff when laughing. Supreme re-watch-ability is written all over it.

It’s easily Cusack’s best movie in 10 years (exactly 10 years – HIGH FIDELITY was released in late March of 2000) and it works as a homage to his 80’s work – among other familiar references, somebody yells: “I want my two dollars!” a nod to his 1985 film BETTER OFF DEAD. That’s another large part of its charm – it’s a riff on a John Cusack 80’s movie that is actually better than some actual John Cusack 80’s movies (sorry, was never a fan of BETTER OFF DEAD and ONE CRAZY SUMMER).

Cusack’s co-stars, Robinson, Corddry, and Duke all have plenty of highly amusing moments and good natural chemistry together. Chevy Chase isn’t really given anything funny to do, but his cryptic creepiness fits in succinctly. There’s a great running gag involving just when and how Glover will lose his arm, and how much the can’t be contained party animal Corddry wants to see it happen, that stands out in all the over the top silliness.

It’s a gross out comedy, it’s a male bonding comedy, it’s an 80’s themed comedy with a kicking soundtrack (any soundtrack that can balance Mötley Crüe, The Talking Heads, Echo & The Bunnymen, Public Enemy, and The Replacements is fine by me), and it’s a rowdy sex comedy. It’s all of those things but what matters most is that it’s all a riot.

I know it looks and sounds stupid, and, yes, it is stupid. But this is a movie that is hilariously smart about its stupidity. And you should be too and go see it.

More later…