Kick-Ass

Imagine for a minute you're standing at the foot of a very tall building, a sky scraper in New York for example. You look up and see a man on the very top of the building, standing at the edge. Do you A.) continue to look up in awe or B.) call the police to try to get him down? Now imagine this man spreads out a pair of makeshift wings like a modern day Icarus, metal and plastic replacing wax and feathers, and jumps. Do you A.) applaud and watch or B.) scream and turn away? I'm going to hope that we all answered B to both of these questions. Why? Because we live in a world in which we know a man can't fly and people don't have super powers. Now, this is the opening scene of the movie Kick-Ass, what do the people in the movie do in this situation? They choose option A in both cases, even though they also live in a world in which they know that a man can't fly and people don't have super powers. The man plummets to his death on the top of a taxi and no one is bothered. Is there something wrong here, or is it just me?

This movie is supposed to take place in the real world in which there are no super powers, just normal people. No one is phased, no one is bothered, no one feels anything, in the face of super-violence. Tell me, how am I supposed to feel connected to the movie when the characters feel nothing when killing people? And these are the good guys I'm talking about. They feel nothing. Hack someone's leg off? No big deal. Pin a woman to a door with giant knives through the torso? Whatever. That these are done by an 11-year old girl who feels nothing about it? You've lost me, movie. That the protagonist, our emotional connection, center, the character through whom we are guided, is barely disturbed by these things, and seems more concerned that there are other people better prepared than he is? I'm gone.

And this is supposed to be a comedy, right? There's no comedy here. There's nothing funny. Just horrific. Am I supposed to laugh when the crazy Armenian guy crashes into the taxi at the beginning after thinking maybe he's going to fly? Am I supposed to laugh when the 11-year old girl messes with a guy before crushing him in a car-crusher? Am I supposed to laugh when the bad guy gets blasted out a window in a high rise by a bazooka? There are ways to make the horrific humorous, as disturbing as A Clockwork Orange is, there's a lot of humor in it, but this movie fails at it completely. You're just bombarded with disturbing images and characters who feel nothing.

So what separates the good guys from the bad guys? They both kill and don't care about it. But the bad guys deal drugs. And the good guys kill the bad guys. But the bad guys take care of some of the bad guys, as well. Oh, and the bad guy framed Nicolas Cage's character as a drug dealer so he went to jail. And Cage's character blames the bad guy for the death of his wife because while he was in jail she was depressed and self-medicated, while pregnant with their daughter (the now 11-year old girl), OD'd and died. I fail to see, exactly, how the bad guy is at fault for that though. A pregnant woman who is obviously doesn't care that much about her unborn child by self-medicating ends up killing herself...I think Cage's anger is misplaced and should be aimed at her, especially for being totally irresponsible. Then we wouldn't have a story, even if you feel it doesn't make sense and isn't justified. But that's me.

And another entry in the 'does-not-make-sense' log is Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character. The son of the bad guy. He wants in on his father's business, though it's not clear how much, exactly, he knows about it. He obviously has an idea, but particulars, don't know. He gets set up as Red Mist by his father to try and lure Kick-Ass in to take care of him. But Red Mist finds that Kick-Ass isn't the problem, Nic Cage's Big Daddy is. So he tries to get to Big Daddy through Kick-Ass. When they get him, they also take Kick-Ass. And Red Mist obviously started to feel some connection with Kick-Ass because he pleads with his father to let Kick-Ass go. But his father instead sets up a website and webcam under the guise that Kick-Ass will be unmasking himself, only then to serve as a very public beating and gruesome murder of both Big Daddy and Kick-Ass. Red Mist asks his father to stop it, but he doesn't, and he's obviously disturbed by what his father is doing. So then when Kick-Ass and Hit Girl (the 11-year old girl, daughter of Big Daddy) go to take care of the bad guy...for some reason Red Mist starts fighting Kick-Ass, though he doesn't really seem to have any beef with him. They have no reason to fight each other. Then Kick-Ass uses the bazooka, sends the bad guy out the window to explode in mid-air. And at the very end, Red Mist appears to vow to be a villain. Even though he seemed disturbed when he saw what exactly his father did, so you'd think that even though they kill his father, he'd understand. It just didn't make sense to me.

And even though this is supposed to take place in the real world without super powers, Hit Girl seems to display rather super-human skills. She's able to jump wall-to-wall, bounce off people, aim, time jumps to catch guns in mid-air, change clips without missing a beat, etc, etc. I have a hard time believing a normal person (which she's supposed to be) could be that good and agile.

Oh, and there's a freaking jet pack. A jet pack. In the real world. Jet. Pack. I live in the real world. I don't remember ever seeing a jet pack. Not for $300,000. Not for any price. They don't exist, they're not real. Don't tell me this is the real world then throw in a jet pack. That just makes me angry because it's so ridiculous.

Now, I didn't hate everything. I quite liked the line “My only superpower was being invisible to girls.” It's funny because it's true. And...well, that's pretty much it. Had there been a little more between Dave/Kick-Ass and his friends, this might have been a little better, but what little there was wasn't that great anyway. Oh, the girl Dave likes thinks he's gay, ha ha, that's so funny. But at least it could've helped give it more of the tone they seemed to looking for. When the movie was focused on this stuff at the beginning, it at least gave you a decent feeling. And Nicolas Cage is somewhat enjoyable...until you have to sit and watch him burn for a minute or two. On a side note, is it just me or is it a bad idea to have a diner in a comic book store? Eat some greasy food, get your hands covered in ketchup, browse comics. I wonder how much the store loses on damaged and destroyed comics.

And I can't believe how they've marketed this. It's marketed as a comedy. It's supposed to be funny. You get in and it's not funny, it's something completely different in style and tone. I wonder at what point the parents who brought their kids to this R-rated movie (I have nothing against bringing kids to see R-rated movies, as I saw many a R-rated movie as a kid) regretted it. This movie is so totally not appropriate for kids, at all, whatsoever.

This is what desensitization looks like. Super-violence with no reason or purpose. Characters who don't care about killing. I'd like director Matthew Vaughn to sit down with me, watch the movie, and tell me what I'm supposed to feel at any given point and why I should feel that, because I just couldn't tell. I have no idea. You go through all that violence and you end up feeling nothing because it has no point or justification. It made me want to watch a movie with real heart and emotion, like Deep Throat or Debbie Does Dallas.

1/2 star

Hot Tub Time Machine

This is a movie which simultaneously made me cringe thinking how bad it could be and chuckle thinking how funny it could be. It could be really dumb (the unfunny kind) or fun. And it is funny. It's actually pretty darn funny. Is it as good as The Hangover (which I keep seeing as being a comparison)? No. But, The Hangover is a freak, the kind of comedy that only comes around once in a while; extraordinarily funny, good characters, fun story, and really well made. It's the kind of movie that sets the bar. Hot Tub Time Machine certainly fits the same kind of mold as The Hangover, three grown men and one who's a bit of an outsider to their group, take a trip to have a wild weekend and wackiness ensues. It's a few notches below though.

Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Lou (Rob Corddry) are old friends. In high school they were best friends. But as they've gotten older, life has kind of pulled them apart and they're more just friends in word only, because they were friends. Lou's an alcoholic and has an accident in his garage drumming to music in his running car with the gas pedal. Naturally this raises concern among the doctor and Lou's friends. So, to keep an eye on Lou, they decide to take him back to the scene of their greatest weekend ever – the Kodiak Valley ski resort. Adam brings along his nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke) who lives in his basement and most likely rarely leaves it.

Kodiak Valley isn't quite as they remembered, it's gone downhill like an amateur down the K-12. They get their old room back, it's a dump and the hot tub is disgusting. But it magically starts bubbling again and they get in for a wild night of hot tub partying and drinking. During the course of the night, they spill a Russian energy drink on the controls and that's when things get weird – they wake up transported back to the weekend they were there, for Winterfest '86. They're themselves as they are in 2010, but the people see them as they were in 1986 (except Jacob, who wasn't born yet so appears as he is, just go with it). Jacob is a science-fiction dork so he warns them all about the danger of changing anything. So they try to remember what they did that weekend so they can do it again, even if they'd rather do it differently.

Cusack is obviously the star of the movie, but it really belongs to Corddry as Lou. He steals the show and his character really brings the emotional connection. He's an asshole, but through the events of the weekend, you see how he ended up down the path to where he is. He becomes a very sympathetic character. And he plays it so well. He makes the film what it is.

There are problems. There are jokes that are never really paid off or explained (“great white buffalo”). Characters they don't really take advantage of (Chevy Chase shows up a couple times as the hot tub repairman, says a few cryptic lines, and that's it. His character seems as though it's meant to be their time travel guide, but he's not). A couple of unfortunate crude moments (projectile vomit is not funny and scenes waiting for Crispin Glover's bell hop character to lose his arm are uncomfortable). And just a general missed opportunity to poke fun and reference Cusack's films of the 1980's (he's a producer of the film yet all there really is is a line 'We're stuck in the 1980's, I hate this decade.' Come on, you're in the 80's on a snowy mountain, Better Off Dead anyone?) and the decade in general (this should be an opportunity to look at the 80's and how things have changed rather than just a few jokes). Things like this are what keep the movie from being really good rather than just pretty funny.

I've seen the language brought quite a bit; yes, they use naughty words, lots of them. Get over it. It's Rated-R, it's for adults. Can we get over this whole 'oh my, they just said the f-word, oh no, they said it again' thing? It's been 16 years since Kevin Smith had to appeal an NC-17 rating on Clerks merely for its language. Tarantino has been giving us profanity laced films for almost 20 years. Scorsese has been “f---”-ing it up for, what, 40 years? It's nothing new. Move along and stop acting so outraged by it.

I laughed. Pretty continuously throughout. In the end, they play loose with the rules of time travel, which is part of the fun. They're aware of the problems of time travel, try to follow the rules, but sometimes it's better to change things (hey, even in Back To The Future the McFly's end up better than they were at the beginning). It won't be the most memorable movie or likely one that you want to watch again and again, but it's fun. But really, what are you expecting from a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine?

2 1/2 stars out of 5