Logging

Film:  Kick Ass

If you take for a premise that superheroes and comic books are meaningful, I can see the delight this movie might offer.  If you see comic books and superheroes for what they are:  juvenile pastimes for guys who can't get laid, this movie is maddening in a way other super hero movies are not.  Here's why: it is a well executed deconstruction of comic book movies.  The very act of deconstruction presupposes a universe where comic books are of fundamental importance.  What a horrible world view.

Perhaps if I saw this movie at a different moment, I could enjoy it more.  Part of me feels guilty in a way for not being able to enjoy it, since it certainly is well executed.  But if you can like a movie for having its heart in the right place despite the flaws, the converse also must be true, you can hate a movie when its heart is in the wrong place, even if well executed.  This is the accusation I would throw at Kick Ass: the heart of the film is in the wrong place.  It is derivative of other derivations -- of comic books, of Luc Besson, of John Woo, of Quentin Tarantino -- its violence is mindnumbing and meant to be comic.  It delights in torture and having an 11-year old girl running around murdering people.  The characters draw their value from being watched and popular as opposed to being good.  Within the film, the characters choose to be good -- not because good has some sort of value or meaning unto itself -- but rather, because good is what people will root for and watch.  The same logic is why women film film sex tapes.

I suppose all these same type of cricitisms could be leveled againt Tarantino, particularly in the Kill Bill movies.  And maybe if I were 35 years old when Reservoir Dogs came out, I have felt a similar way.  I dunno.  We live in strange times.  But I can't help but think after watching this film:  what happened to the movies?  Why have we allowed this great American art form to be hijacked by the nerds?