Kick-Ass (2010)

3/5

Kick-Ass tells the story of a normal high schooler (Johnson) who reads comic books and wonders why no insane prepubescent kid has ever tried being a superhero like in the comics. So he decides to try it. And gets his ass kicked. So bad, in fact, that most of his body is replaced by metal plates and his nerve endings are destroyed. But he gets videotaped defending a stranger and becomes famous via YouTube and MySpace, which attracts the attention of two real life superheros: Big Daddy (Cage) and Hit-Girl (Moretz). Things spin wildly out of control and what started as an experiment quickly turns deadly.

The movie has graphic violence and language. Their presence in and of itself does not concern me. What bugs me is that they use it repetitively for comic effect and, quite frankly, it gets old. Hearing an 11-year-old girl swear is only (potentially) funny the first time. As is seeing her disembowel someone; seeing it more than once makes it seem like she has a weird fetish or something. The piece's writing was fairly solid. The jokes were great (although some were quite predictable) and Cage's intonation and prosody were absolutely hilarious. The acting was surprisingly good. However, Kick-Ass's real life relationship just didn't strike me as very compelling or original. I just didn't care about what was going on in his personal life. All in all, however, this movie is engaging and exciting. It takes a relatively old genre and spins it in a new direction. And it does so with humor and no sense of boundary. And for that it deserves at least some credit.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/

Never Back Down (2008)

2/5

Jeff Wadlow's Never Back Down (working title Get Some) is, for all intents and purposes, Fight Club meets Bring It On. And it is an amazing movie. By which I mean to say that I was very amazed by it. Amazed at the atrocious acting, at the lifeless characters, at the predictable plot, and at the cheesy dialogue. But amazed most of all that I was actually able to enjoy it.

To discuss the acting first: Sean Faris's "knowing smiles" and "charming smirks" made ME want to clock him, for looking so retarded. His glib self-satisfaction and fighter mentality didn't mesh with his emo outsider persona. His home life and past mistakes were disarmingly mind-numbing. His mother and younger brother are utter buffoons, shallowly envisioned and hollowly portrayed. All the girls in the movie, and I mean ALL of them, were written as absolute idiots, in every respect. The mother, in an argument about fighting, asks him if he thinks breaking things is fun. Then she throws a glass against the wall and breaks it, encourages her younger son to do the same, and agrees that it does feel good. Then cleans it up, because that's her job as mother. Uhh, what? Another time, this one chick says, I think you'll lose in a fight, and then is confused as to why that might upset the person she told.

These are all faults of an insultingly stupid script. Not a single line said in the movie could be taken seriously. Everything was laughable. Of all the movies I've seen so far this year, which granted is two, Never Back Down takes the cake for funniest. It is difficult not to laugh at such a preposterous premise executed with such acute, unerring, seemingly planned, precision in creating this farcical, sentimental dreck. Which reminds me: What high school do these people attend? I want to go to this imaginary paradise, where all the girls are sexy, bikini-clad models, where lesbians make out in bubble baths while others watch, and where the most violent school rivalry ends peacefully in that seemingly ubiquitous "nod and smile" of approval.

All that being said, it does in fact try to be more than a cheesy teen emo fighting romance. You have to give it credit for trying. Unfortunately, the attempt itself just made the whole movie seem more pathetic. While everyone groaned and poopooed the literary correlations (the shield of Achilles in the Iliad), I really liked it and thought it elevated the movie to a more sophisticated realm. And it was a blast to watch. Even if you don't think the serious parts are funny, you will still laugh at the intended comedic elements, which are frequent and many. I had a good time watching it. But I really hope Sean Faris never acts again.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt1023111/