Score: 8 out of 10
This is a fun movie. Ultra violent. (Well, not super ultra gory violent, but plenty violent enough.) Witty and crude dialog. Great action scenes. Overall a great movie to watch.
The acting is all good. Kick Ass is an excellent hero which still has the youthful n00biness that is required for a Peter-Parker type protagonist, without all the whiny-pussiness of whats-his-name... Toby Maguire. I belived his ability to fight, and it didn't feel like watching Keanu Reaves pretending to know kung fu. I wasn't really digging the "everyone-has-brown-curly-hair" look, but I realize that must be what normal East Coast kids are wearing nowadays.
Without reading the comic, I felt the comic-ness stripped from the dialog and the framing of the shots. Our good guys were quite visciously good, and the bad guys were comically bad. Kick Ass doesn't pull back when it needs to fuck someone up. And it doesn't pull punches when it wants to deliver a nut crunching moment.
The movie is a bit dated with 'My Space' references, but it saddens me to know that something is dated when in reality it was no more than two-three years ago. It appears that our Tech generation lingo is easy to become dated when our trends can clearly be defined by which month they became popular.
There are a couple reasons why this movie isn't a solid 9 or 10 for me. The pacing is just a LITTLE slow. The movie feels like it could've moved quicker but there were many times I felt the scene slowing down significantly. This doesn't break the movie, it just pulls it down from being a really fun ride that you want to get back on. I wouldn't mind watching it again, but I'm not dying to.
The other reason is, a movie has to rock my balls off to push from a 9 to a 10. This is a litte subjective, because sometimes a movie that I would classify as a 9 would get 10 status if I hadn't have seen ANY trailers or watched any sequences. So the suprise and the shock off all those 'jokes' and 'action scenes' that I would usually be overexposed to, are completely new to me. It takes hiding from trailers to poop out that extra point for me. I say that because I've accidentally seen a couple of Hit-Girl's best action scenes PRIOR to watching it, and it made them much less exciting the second time around. If you're putting your best scenes online and I see them, it will reduce the overall impact of my experience of the movie. That being said, if a movie is SO FUCKING AMAZING that it gives away it's best scenes... and STILL makes me EYEGASM, then it will receive a 10 regardless.
Believe it or not, the Audience is also a minor factor in making the movie experience worthwhile. If i'm watching a movie 5-6 weeks down the release road and there's only 6-7 people in the theatre with me, it feels deflated when scenes that should make the crowd groan or gasp in reaction to a scene draw only one or two other people to react. The perfect example is when I watched Gladiator for the first time in San Diego State as a free screening. The auditorium was packed wall to wall with anxious college students. It was INFINITELY more fun to watch people get decapitated when you're rooting with a massive crowd. That's how I felt about Kick-Ass. When Lisa and I decided to watch it RIGHT after work on opening day Friday, it didn't pull a large crowd. Maybe 20 at most. I would imagine the 10pm showings would've had a much rowdier audience to give solid reactions.
Long story short: Kick Ass is a great movie. If you haven't seen the trailers, it'll be EVEN better. Don't bring your kids, unless you're cool with kids hearing about masturbation, tons of the word 'Fuck' and a heaping serving of bloody violence.
