Kick-Ass and the Poochie Generation

The movie begins by asking the question "why has no one else thought of/done this before?" This is not so much the teenage narrator asking this question, but the boastful writer/director as well. What an original concept: ordinary kids and teenagers dress up like superheroes in the real world. Surely, no one has thought of this before. But of course, others have, in comics, but also in an episode of South Park that aired near the release of The Dark Knight. And, if my memory is correct, is not this the premise to the start of Mystery Men? That is not the issue, but it is just a comment to deflate some bloated egos. The real issue is that this premise is begging us to ask this question in real world dynamics. This is not supposed to be "why has no one else thought of/done this before in movies", but why not in real life as well. Moments later, in what is supposed to be the movie's first laugh, that is if it was not telegraphed so far in advance by the movie's own pompous opening question that no one in my theater even chuckled, someone dressed in heroic garb jumps from the building and plummets to a violent death on a car. This is what would happen in real life, right?

The movie reminds us that in the real world, there are bad guys. We see a drug deal interrogation go wrong. No laughs in this scene. Rather, the laughs come after as the boss who ordered a man's finger cut off ponders what he will order for a movie snack as his son, who was sitting in a limo outside the building where the violence just took place, drives off. Damn, they will miss the movie trailers!

After some 15 minutes of exposition using pseudo-teenage banter (thanks a lot, Juno), the narrator gets his costume via Amazon and goes out to train on a roof, similar to that of Spiderman. Like Spidey, training does not go well and he is sort of disappointed. A real kid trying to be a real superhero would not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound or suddenly have the courage to try to. Expected. The movie is playing by its own rules. Trying to stop a carjacking, he gets stabbed, then needlessly hit by a car (I guess being stabbed is not violent and shocking enough, or funny enough). He is rushed to the ER in a broken state. 

By this time the movie has established itself as another "subversive" action/comedy. The second interrogation scene blows up a guy in an industrial sized microwave with his bloody splattering everywhere. Nicholas Cage shoots a girl in the chest because he is her father and wants her to not be afraid of getting shot by bad guys; he is also training her in lethal weaponry to which she is gifted. The father of the narrator who got hit by the car moments earlier is more concern that his son might have been raped by the two (surprise) minority carjackers instead of his physical injuries resulting from the accident. Rape and fags are funny. Hahaha.

What could have been a wonderfully inventive and entertaining movie with a rarely used, not unique, premise would have been entertaining. It could have been subversive as well. It could have been many things. Scream was funny and scary at the same time. Scream was paying homage to its genre as well as subverting it. Scream had wit. It had class. 

It is not that the movie Kick-Ass itself is bad and without redemption or merit. I enjoyed the first thirty minutes of the film quite a bit and some of the later action scenes are properly choreographed and shocking. Prior to seeing the movie, I had anticipation because of its premise and energetic trailer. But, it is childish in the worst qualities. Cynicism, smarminess, and snarkiness is not a substitute for subversion and wit. Having a child be a knife/gun expert and swearing is not original nor subversive. It is lame. And adding a campy, poppy, child-sung song over the violence is not new or clever or anything but predicable. It is a tired joke dressed up to be hip with all the wrong attitude of what is supposed to be clever. Remember, when the pretty girl speaks to the dorky guy, it's funny... because she thinks he's gay. Haha. 

There is something I like to call the Poochie Effect. Back when The Simpsons was immensely more popular and creative than what it was today, they created the character "Poochie", a talking dog, to make fun of the pseudo "hipness" and "coolness" that other failed cartoons shows were trying to do. Remember Fish Police? Thought not. Poochie was dreamed up by cynical and creatively bankrupt network heads screaming "Attitude! Attitude!" and "Ee needs sunglasses!" because this is their idea of hipness. Poochie wore baggy pants, sunglasses, spoke in slang, mildly swore (it is TV, after all, not HBO) and proclaimed himself to be "half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli". The Simpsons was making fun of this type of character and the children on the show saw through this BS. A decade or so later, the creators of this episode who had children expressed with dismay in an audio commentary that their own children and their children's friends all love Poochie.

Tarantino loves movies and famously praises bad movies as triumphant works of art. He is a great filmmaker. He is a subversive filmmaker. He sometimes has bad taste. However, those without taste and those who envy him and his kind do the same. They elevate middling commercial films as works of art, prematurely declaring them masterpieces because of the Poochie Effect. Why does Kick-Ass court the Comicon crowd? Why does Kick-Ass need to use the already tired phrase "hardcore gamer" to describe its protagonist so much? Why the specific namedropping of Scott Pilgrim? Why the hustling for the redband trailer, the trailer that allows swearing and more violence? Because marketing works, people fall victim to its shallow opium, and the Poochie Generation is created and instantly lost. 

A lot of ground has been lost since The Graduate.