AFTER THE SHOW
Movies, TV, Culture and Society
Number 497, May 2, 2010
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WHY EBERT'S THUMBS DOWN IS
HIS READERS A THUMBS UP
For the controversial 'Kick-Ass,'
there's only so much a critic can take.
By John Greenwald
What does it mean when Roger Ebert, still America's best-known movie critic, gives a film a one-star rating, but the readers of his Web site give it three and one-half stars. I can't remember such a wide spread for a film on his site.
The movie is "Kick-Ass," based on a comic book series. It's both a send-up of teenage dweeb comedies and a brutal, bloodletting action film. It's also become controversial because of a major character, an 11-year-girl named "Hit Girl."
With her pigtails and big eyes, she's cute as a button -- except when she puts on her purple leathers, purple punk wig, black mask and Dick Cheney snarl. Then her style becomes as cold as the razor-sharp blades she hurls at scores of bad guys, killing them all.
To moviegoers nearing 50, especially film critics, there's something outright unnerving about Hit Girl, her obscene language, heartless violence and over-adoring relationship with her father. He's an ex-cop who's out to kill the drug kingpin responsible for the death of his wife and Hit Girl's mother. Pop goes by the nom de superhero Big Daddy and dresses in Batman-like black leather and cowl.
He's also a comic book artist, no less, who fills his studio with walls of weapons -- from tiny handguns to a giant bazooka. Big Daddy has trained his daughter how to use those weapons and all means of hand-to-hand combat so, on screen at least, she out moves and out kills Hong Kong's chop-socky greats. Big Daddy is played by Nicholas Gage, whose gravel voice and threatening posture add to father and daughter's creepy relationship.
All this in a movie that's supposed to be about a superhero-obsessed high schooler who's armed with little more than a green wet suit, force of will and the name Kick-Ass. That plotline, told with a gently wry touch, had possibilities. But it quickly devolves (or accelerates, depending on your taste) into ultra-violent action.
Beyond the predictable acrobatic ninja-type fights and shoot-'em-ups, the specialty of "Kick-Ass" is imploding and exploding bodies, especially heads. Hiding this gore behind plates of glass doesn't diminish its ugliness.
Put all these elements together -- the kinky 11-year-old with her cold-blooded violence, her adoring but icky love of her equally vicious and kinky father, and those viscera-splattered windows -- and you see why this was one too many for Ebert and other critics, especially those into middle age and beyond.
Or, you could relish the over-the-top characters and performers, admire their choice of weapons and the film's semi-successful attempts at humor. Plus, one can always enjoy Kick-Ass' uncostumed efforts to win the heart that beautiful girl of his dreams.
But "Kick-Ass'" outré efforts to mix high school comedy, a bizarre father-daughter love, and disturbing action-bloodshed are too hard to take -- unless you're with the program.
My guess is those people on Ebert's Website who gave the film three and one-half stars caught the let's-rub-it-in-their-face attitudes that have marked comic books since E.C. comic's Mad became an international best seller in the 1950s. Its irony and satire easily oozed into elements of the E.C.'s horror, war and crime comics, also in the early 1950s.
But a hyperventilating U.S. congress, unable to comprehend why some of nation's teens had succumbed to juvenile delinquency, became convinced by a scare-mongering shrink, Dr. Fredric Wertham, that comics were responsible.
The industry set up in 1954 the Comics Code to prevent government censorship, much as the film industry had done with its Production Code and rating system. The Comics Code killed the comic book industry as then constituted and created a generation of bland books, filled with capes, bulging muscles and predictable plots, except for a few titles such as Spider-Man. Only when publishers circumvented the code by selling their magazines directly to comic book stores, and not through newsstand distributors, did a new age of creative freedom emerge.
Hollywood noticed. First, superhero comics became easier to realistically film, thanks to special effects. The industry brought us film series built around "brands" of superheroes: Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man, among others.
But Hollywood also has dipped into alternative comics and graphic novels, with films like "Ghost World" (2001), "Road to Perdition" (2002), "American Splendor" (2003) and "Watchmen" (2009).
"Kick-Ass" is just too derivative and disturbing for Ebert to take. But not for most viewers. The Rotten Tomatoes Website divides its reviews into two major categories: Top Critics and RT Community. "Kick-Ass" received 71% from Top Critics and 91% from Community. That's a wide difference between those have to see movies (the critics) and those who see movies mainly to enjoy them (the fans). For a film like "Kick-Ass," which pushes if not breaks various artistic, social and cultural envelopes, the RT Community is a self-selecting group that walks in the door predisposed to like the picture.
"Kick-Ass" is, in its excesses, the kind of film that separats the critics from the fans. Only history will decide which group better understood and appreciated the film -- whether it's depraved junk or adventuresome entertainment. In that sense, "Kick-Ass" is a worthy and challenging enterprise that helps us define our taste and our judgment. It's not bland.
Readers can e-mail John Greenwald at johnedit@comcast.net. -- 30 --
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