Kick-Ass

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, at 11:45 am today

Good god. What a horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible movie.

Eight hours after seeing it I can't even muster the sputtering disgust at this diarrhea-on-film that I was just forced to sit through. Of all the movies where I've had to restrain myself from walking out lately, this took the most effort to stay in my seat. I got half way up, almost started moving toward the exit, but curiosity to see how far it could go kept me there.

I didn't have any clue it was going to be so bad. Last year, after Watchmen, I wondered where the superhero genre could possibly go, since Watchmen had seemed to put the capstone on it. When the trialers for Kick-Ass started showing up a couple months ago, I thought I had my answer: Kick-Ass appeared to be the logical extension from Watchmen. In a sense, it does that, but really it takes everything that is problematic with, say, The Dark Knight, and magnifies it by an order of magnitude.

But that hardly begins to describe it. Kick-Ass is nothing else than the sick, twisted elaboration of the girl-assassin-with-the-sword fascination that literally has Hollywood masturbating (see first scene of Kick-Ass, complete with a waste basket full of spermy kleenex).

Let me put it bluntly: anyone who thought making a movie about an eleven-year-old girl who turns into a remorseless psychopathic killer who gleefully jams a samurai blade into defenseless people fleeing and begging for their lives, and which endorses these actions as fun, wholesome and righteous, is, in my book fucking insane on a level that makes all other Postmodern dysfunctions seem like quaint melodrama.

To everyone who made this movie: go fuck yourself. Fuck you for getting me to sit through this.

This is what Hollywood at nadir looks like. Can it get any lower?

Here's Ebert's Twitter on this movie.

update: I'm with Roger.