At the Movies With Peter Travers: “Kick-Ass”
This week At the Movies, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers talks about a comic book film that definitely lives up to its name, Kick-Ass. The Rated-R flick is about a motley crew of teenage nobodies who don homemade costumes and gain popularity as amateur superheroes, even though they don’t have any actual superpowers. The main character here, Kick-Ass, is played by Brit actor Aaron Johnson, but the star-making turn in this film comes courtesy of 13-year-old Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl, a pint-size assassin who makes Uma Thurman in Kill Bill look like Uma Thurman in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Kick-Ass also gets stellar support from Christopher Mintz-Plasse, or “McLovin” as you know him from Superbad, as Red Mist and an incredibly deadpan Nicolas Cage — the best kind of Nicolas Cage — as the vigilante Big Daddy. In Hollywood’s hands, this movie would have failed, but thanks to British director Matthew Vaughn, Kick-Ass does kick ass.