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Created Apr 22, 2010 09:08PM PST • Edited Nov 25, 2018 06:14PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Convulsively funny, gleefully inappropriate and brilliantly executed, Kick-Ass exuberantly fulfills its title. A high school comedy as much as a spoof on superheroes, it deftly mines the touchstones of both genres. This alchemy creates a cult classic that’s perfect for the masses, as its huge first-week box office attests.

   Kick-Ass mints two new movie stars while making savvy use of three others. Yes, it also plumbs new depths in child vulgarity. Oh well, that’s entertainment.

   Speaking of classic genre touchstones, the movie self-consciously ends by setting up its sequel. Bring it on! The lines will be around the block.

   Finally, how did a bunch of Brits make such a great American movie? Writer-director Matthew Vaughn and stars Aaron Johnson & Mark Strong are subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. Hail to them.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Ladies & gentlemen, meet Aaron Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz, brand-spanking new movie stars.

   • Johnson’s innocent swagger and squeaky voice make him a more effective Peter Parker-type than even Tobey Maguire. And how’s a Brit perfectly play an American high school dude? Awesome.
   • Moretz steals the second half of the movie as the accurately named Hit-Girl.

   Several proven stars brighten up the rest of the large cast.

   • Mark Strong adds a well played NY mafioso to a crowded resume that already included a Jordanian intelligence officer in Body of Lies and an evil British patrician in Sherlock Holmes. What can’t he play?
   • Nic Cage plays another weirdo that just seems right, this time a revenge seeking father who turns himself and his pre-teen daughter into caped avengers. The guy has become the Christopher Walken for a new generation.
   • Christopher Mintz-Plasse adds a second inimitable putz to his oeuvre. He ain’t McLovin here, but he’s still plenty funny.
   • Garrett M. Brown’s not a big name, but surely is a familiar face, here playing a clueless dad. Is there any other kind in a high school movie?

   Then there’s ample helpings of cheesecake from a bodacious pair of actresses.

   • Deborah Twiss’s busty teacher inspires fevered teen dreams.
   • Lyndsy Fonseca’s dream girl goes from unreachable to insatiable when she realizes who the boy next door really is.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Writer-director Matthew Vaughn’s film neatly touches every base a canonical superhero origin story must, from the nebbish who won’t abide evil anymore, to the confederation of allied heroes, to the evil impostor posing as a hero, to that enemy swearing vengeance in the inevitable sequel. Then Vaughn joins this core theme with a classic high school sitcom that would make Glee proud. Brilliant.

    As for the over-the-top vulgarity and ultra-violence in which pre-teen Hit-Girl engages, the film continues the downward march of recent sociopathic comedies like Observe and Report. Fortunately this film is funnier and less mean spirited than that one.

    In fact, the whole thing comes across as good clean fun, notwithstanding the filthy language from the mouth of babes, coke snorting by a father in front of his son, and torrents of blood from mutilated bad guys. Junior high kids must be busting their guts trying to get in to a lalapalooza like this.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Great 4.0

    Just when things are looking darkest, an unseen avenger starts taking out bad guys to save the day. Like a Pavlovian dog, I exclaimed “Hit-Girl!” And it was.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Notice the Claudia Schiffer billboard that serves as a backdrop of one of the scenes. Schiffer’s the wife of writer-director Matthew Vaughn. Nice!

    The penthouse scenes of the mafia boss were especially well drawn. From the Self blood sculpture in the foyer, to the bazooka shot over 5th Avenue, the whole setting was right up there with any super-villian’s lair in movie history.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.2

    Oh boy. Hit-Girl’s got a potty mouth that would make a drunk trucker blush and the stone cold killing ability of a … Hit-Girl.

    As for sex, the lovable loser gets the girl, again and again we’re told.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Brutal 3.0

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.0

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.5

    The conceit is that real life people function as superheroes, subject to all the reality constraints as the rest of us. This is often honored in the breach. No matter. Surrealism is still realism, of a sort.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Surreal 3.0

24. Physical Glib 1.5