Kick-Ass

Taken from Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's graphic novel, "Kick-Ass," like fellow comic book adaptation "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (which it name-drops), has problems with sustenance. In its multilayered first half, it does something moderately excellent. It follows Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), as he goes from geek nobody to famous superhero Kick-Ass; the criminal operations of a much-hated crime lord Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) and his outcast son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse); and the efforts of rogue crime fighters Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), as they try to bring D'Amico down. This is rich in humor, and transcendent of the shallow boundaries that it automatically sets for itself. But, in the later portions, as the film stretches a little too long, it isn't able to hold together. Director Matthew Vaughn makes the mistake of taking Kick-Ass offscreen and leaving the stage set for Hit Girl. (Much criticism has been spouted due to the level of violence and bad language perpetuated by someone as young as Hit Girl. I would dismiss such claims as mostly idiotic, due to the overblown nature of the earlier Hit Girl moments of the film. Onward into the film, however, I see what the haters are talking about.) When you have as electric a character as Kick-Ass, you don't want to do that. Subtracting the power supply, the film loses its charge (which continues even after he's brought back), and along with that, common sense (for some reason forgetting entirely about the romantic interest of the film at the end; the last shot is a mumbled echo of an earlier incident, with no real bearing on the plot whatsoever).

Pulling back to explain a bit more of the plot: Dave Lizewski notes that nothing really distinguishes him from anyone else. He has only a couple of nerdy friends (played in very adept comic performances by Clark Duke and Even Peters) and his designs for a girl (Lyndsy Fonseca) are entertained by the object of his desire only because she thinks he's a homosexual and because she wants a "gay BFF." (He also, in one of the film's biggest misplays, a cringe-inducing development, has sexual thoughts about his English teacher.) He is also routinely mugged and stunned by how people refrain from helping, only watching dumbfounded (the quote "Evil can only exist when good people do nothing" comes to mind). He decides to suit up to combat the crime of the city, and soon enough he's widely known as a real superhero. This causes commotion among the felons, such as D'Amico, even though Kick-Ass isn't responsible for a lot of the things that people think he did. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are the ones accountable, going for revenge against D'Amico, who sent Big Daddy to prison through planted evidence and is now peddling a lot of cocaine.

This is both more appealing and more negative than it sounds, well-played by Vaughn and his solid set of actors, including a winning Johnson (who I hope to see more of), Cage pushing too far to diverting effects, and Moretz, who has (perhaps too much) facility. These performers and amusing (if flawed w/r/t narration) writing make it a real pain in the ass that the film goes down the road that it ultimately does. B-

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

With "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," director Edgar Wright deftly mixes and matches the plot points of Bryan Lee O'Malley's moderately indelible comic book series to come up with a workable but ultimately far too hurried adaptation.

But there is much to be said for it. Wright shows his capabilities as an accomplished director here; this is his best film to date (I say this only having seen his in my opinion mediocre "Shaun of the Dead"). How he plays the world of the spaced-out Scott is superb. In the book, Scott is notably at the mercy of time, but this isn't quite as intense for the reader. In the film, Wright excellently accentuates this to the point that the scenes slide and slam together. And, in his script with Michael Bacall, he does a great job of filtering the book's sardonic and eccentric humor through a cinematic lens.

The actors fit the characters' shoes admittedly to varying degrees of success, but at least they're all on the high end of the spectrum. Michael Cera, who I had doubts about in the role of the title character, does well, as do Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona, Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, and Jason Schwartzman, delightfully glib if slightly over-the-top, as Gideon.

For the uninitiated (who, to me, will be much better off when viewing this film as they won't have the books to think about in the back of their minds), Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is a Toronto-based layabout without a job who's floating in the world just outside of college, living in a crappy apartment consisting of stuff mostly owned by his roommate Wallace (Culkin). He's got a band (Sex Bob-Omb) and a girlfriend in high school (Knives Chau, played simultaneously as worthy and as pathetic by Ellen Wong) who he's not serious about but who's serious about him. He sees a hot girl in his dreams (much better explained in the book; I'll leave it at that), who comes into his life soon afterwards as an American moving to Canada for some quiet time. This is Ramona (Winstead), and according to those on the party scene, she's too much for him. But this is not the case, as they come to a relationship.

Not as simple as that, however. Scott is faced with the challenge of having to dispatch a whopping total of 7 "evil exes," who make up a sort of "league." They range from flames she had very minor encounters with in grade school to the one that she's still not over. I agree with the speculation of at least some that these battle scenes were dense and probably should have been wider spaced. Wright would have had to make a film 2 and half to 3 hours to do that, but still: except for the first two, which are meticulously re-created, the rest are sped through, cutting off huge developments (one wouldn't understand the true power of Envy Adams' devastation from this film) as the film goes headlong towards the ending. This is on some level good: I disliked the drawing-out of some of the conflicts in the book and it would be a pain to see them played out again on-screen. But overall, it's a bit slipshod.

The second half plays as if Wright took apart the end of the series, threw it in a box, and blew it up with dynamite. Strands of the plot are all over the place, as the film is very simplified. As I said before, this is well-done by Wright but, of course, disconcerting for the observant reader. The construction of the ending is completely foreign to that of the book, simultaneously refreshing and bizarre, using Knives Chau to a very profuse extent. She feels like an intruder in the messily observed climax and ending. It works at times, but it is not exemplary craftsmanship on Wright's part. Also: his decision to dance around the book's emotional pieces nicely lightens the mood but backfires in that it shuts out very important content.

As a gamer and a jester, Wright is able to do an admirable job with much of this film. He makes "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" absorbing and at times even surprising for me as a previous reader. But he didn't entirely make it work. Although I may be slightly off, I think those taking in this story for the first time will appreciate this film version better. However, if you were going to pick between the comics and the feature, I'd say go with the reading. B-