Zac, Leonardo DiCaprio called. He wants to body-shave your torso.

Flab versus Ab.

A young married couple with a newborn are faced with a rowdy college fraternity moving in next door. And all rock hard abs break loose… well, not really, but once Zac Efron takes his shirt off, there’s really nothing left in the universe to look at.

The suburban comedy NEIGHBORS finds Mac (chub Seth Rogen), improbably married to Kelly (smokin’ Rose Byrne), parents of the cutest little baby (Elise and Zoey Vargas); in their 30s, they still feel cool enough to hang with the younger set. That theory is put to the test when college frat Delta Psi, headed by Teddy (Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco), move in next door and start causing party, noise, vandalism, and unassailable abs.

Mac and Kelly try to take it in stride, try to bond with Teddy’s crowd by bearing gifts of weed, try to walk the cool walk and talk the cool talk, but end up alienating Delta Psi because, well, old. Responsibilities, jobs, tiredness, no abs.

His blue eyes shimmering at their first meeting, Teddy very courteously asks Mac and Kelly to call him first if there’s too much noise and not to call the cops. Mac, not able to contact Teddy during the loud frat party – promptly calls the cops (Hannibal Buress). Teddy feels betrayed, and events escalate between the frustrated couple and Delta Psi, until it culminates in a gigantic party (as movies of this ilk so often do) that will decide the fate of Mac and Kelly’s marriage, Delta Psi’s future and Zac Efron’s glittering abs.

Someone tell Efron to put his shirt back on or we’ll never get this scene done!

In no way related to the dark Belushi-Aykroyd 1981 film of the same name, NEIGHBORS is not seeking to arc any damaged souls or raise any political issues, or even find true love amongst war-torn adversity. It just wants to blow up shit, get drunk and vomit on your lawn, sculpt some dildoes, have stoned party-sex, and show off Zac Efron’s abs. (I mean, really! He’s 27. How old was he when he started working out to get a body shaped like – as Seth Rogen observes – “a giant arrow pointing to your penis”?)

Ike Barinholtz in another great supporting role as Mac’s bud, who helps with the plots to bring down Delta Psi. His most hilarious one-liner (“Rape!”) just has to be heard in context to be appreciated. Carla Gallo is Ike’s wife, taken in by the hugeness of the Delta Psi penises. Rose Byrne is allowed to use her native Australian accent which allows us to touch ourselves downunda. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is a frat boy, and Craig Roberts is Assjuice. Halston Sage is Teddy’s dripping wet dream of a girlfriend, and Lisa Kudrow is the college principal. In flashbacks, it’s amusing to see two great comedy teams as Delta Psi pioneers – creating the concept for toga parties is The Lonely Island aka Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccome and Akiva Schaffer, and inventing beer pong are the WORKAHOLICS Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, Anders Holm and Kyle Newacheck.

Newbie writers Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien keep the oppositionist plot snappy and director Nicholas Stoller (GET HIM TO THE GREEK) keeps our attention by showing us abs.

END

Hit-Girl graduates to Batman with Kick-Ass as her Robin.

Kicks it up a Cerebral Notch.

No matter that KICK-ASS 2 loses the precocious and comedic tone of its predecessor (KICK-ASS, 2010), it remains a scathing exposé on the real world consequences of superheroing in a world that is more evil and twisted than any comic universe can comprehend.

The violence is graphic, the swearing is viciously funny, the colors are glaring and the action is livid, but the best aspect of KICK-ASS 2 is how it displays an understanding of consequences when it transposes comic book ideals into the real world environment.

The crime-fighting exploits of college boy Dave Lizewski aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) have inspired myriad masked heroes taking to the streets to combat wrongdoing. However, just as every action creates an opposite and equal reaction, the new rash of “heroes” spawns a new breed of villain, that matches the heightened tenor of the heroes. The young man whose gangster father was killed by Kick-Ass, Chris D’Amico aka Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), tips into psychotic, renames himself The Motherfucker, and accrues a team of insane criminal acolytes to create murderous havoc in the city, while he seeks vengeance on Kick-Ass. Mintz-Plasse’s performance teeters on the precipice of cheese and melodrama, but he infuses it with a somber darkness that grounds it in real world psychosis; frankly, an amazing nuanced job, which we do not expect to be so convincing.

The hero and villain being two sides of the same problem is one of the excellent implicit messages in KICK-ASS 2 that will go largely unnoticed. Toward the end of the film, Dave muses on the fact that his “superhero” may have been directly responsible for creating the “supervillains” to oppose it: “Upon defeating the Motherfucker and his army of criminals, did we make the world a better place? Or did we just finish what I started when I put on the mask?”

Meaning, the creation of the HERO spawned the VILLAINS (rather than the other way round, as in the Batman universe). In other words, as you ramp up the size of your armed forces – thinking that will stultify enemy resistance before it starts – there will, in fact, rise up bigger and more radical insurgency towards your armed forces, to match them in force and fury — cough– Middle East. It’s the evolutionary race between predator and prey; as prey becomes tougher, more cautious, more camouflaged, predators become more ferocious, cannier and more perceptive. The vicious circle spirals out of control.

KICK-ASS 2 is also a coming-of-age tale, for the actual star of the movie, Chloe Grace Moretz as Mindy/Hit-Girl. A KICK-ASS sequel had to follow the fate of the young superhero girl raised by the city’s first true superhero (Nic Cage as Big Daddy, who died gruesomely in the first movie). Mindy is now trying to fit into “normal” society under the watchful eye of her father’s cop partner, Marcus (Morris Chestnut). After slumber partying with the “mean girls,” after the cheerleader tryouts and the dating scene (which surprisingly doesn’t include a date-rape attempt, but a vanilla date-dump scene!), Mindy will come to realize her destiny is, in fact, being Hit-Girl. But it would come at a price that few superhero movies address: her vigilantism in the final killing spree would cause her own guardian Marcus to come after her on principle, even though his vow was to take care of her. And Hit-Girl embraces her vigilantism, knowing she cannot help but be an outlaw. So on the one hand it’s acceptance of her fate; on the other, she is admitting to willfully abrogating the social strictures she is trying to preserve. Whether Hit-Girl is hero or villain is perception in the end. That flawless skin, those chest buds, those anemone lips and blond tresses inform me she’s hero. (Although a flaw in the story is in thinking a trained killer like Mindy would be as hormonally affected as regular teen girls when it comes to dates, bullying and boy-bands.)

Writer-director Mark Wadlow has judiciously brought the Mark Millar/John Romita Jr. graphic novel to life as an adult film. Just because the word superhero is bandied about doesn’t mean KICK-ASS 2 must automatically be perceived as simpleminded or juvenile.

This franchise is so powerful because it couches all these concepts in a wholly entertaining, satisfying wallop to the limbic part of our brain. It’s got all the fun elements that Marvel sluice into their kids-movies-disguised-as adult fare (screaming colors, quips, punching), and then it steps up the intensity with R-rated familial sacrifice, beheadings, cop-killing, finally throwing in morally ambiguous darkness (vigilantism, redemption from past sins) that many will miss precisely because they equate this genre with baby-minded diversions.

From Pet Detective (good), to The Riddler (evil), to The Colonel (morally ambiguous).

Jim Carrey is Colonel Stars and Stripes, leading a wannabe crimefighting team called Justice Forever; he’s a rampaging neurotic who will blissfully cripple criminals whilst chastising his team for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Full credit to Carrey for once again burying himself in a role where he is practically unrecognizable, but demerit points for him going rogue against the film’s marketing campaign and denouncing his violent character after the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012. One thing has nothing to do with the other, and it’s sad that Carrey unnecessarily entwined his ego in the inevitable subsequent non-sequitur debate over gun control. If Carrey had said nothing, no one would have suffered any less or further; not the film, not his career, not the families of the victims at Sandy Hook, but by inserting himself into the narrative, he effectively drew attention away from any real issues. Any news story featuring Carrey’s disavowal of the film was now an “entertainment” piece.

The film’s potent messages were also diluted by Carrey’s stunt. The KICK-ASS series illustrates how violence begets violence, and that “for real people who try to be superheroes, eventually, it had to end too.” Things fall apart; the center cannot hold with a violence-against-violence ethos. There has to be something more – and this movie provides that answer: Dave narrates that “superheroes can’t exist in the real world for a reason – because the real world needs real heroes, and not some punk playing dressup!” Amazingly, in this Hollywood blam-fest, the difference between “hero” and “vigilante” is defined – a vigilante might enact justice on purse-snatchers or corporate thugs, but a hero will also aid those in need of food, clothing, shelter, a helping hand – one of the very traits Carrey’s Colonel emphasizes in low-key scenes that do not include blammo! And Carrey himself missed this salient point by shooting his mouth off like an incognizant turnip.

Taylor-Johnson has ripped up himself for the role of Dave. He’s meant to be a wimp, trained by Moretz’s teen Mindy (who is also in stunning shape), but as soon as he takes his shirt off, it looks like his physique has been sprayed on by Marvel Comics. Gone is the dynamic between them – that of a bigger brother with a more adept and lethal little sister. At the conclusion of KICK-ASS, when Dave flew Mindy home in the jet-pack (under the cosmic majesty of Marius Vries’ Flying Home theme), it was innocent and loving and platonic. No matter Mindy’s foul mouth and killing skills, she was an 11-year-old schoolgirl. Now they are on the same sexual playing field, so besides all this lust in my groin being legal, their interaction is somewhat confusing.

At the conclusion, it is sad to see Mindy leaving Dave to motorbike across a bay bridge (that old symbolism of “crossing over”), but maybe the sadness stems from that poignantly uplifting Flying Home theme, tying the franchise together and edging a tear in our eyes. We imagine Dave and Mindy would end as an item, but the film skews more realistically by leading Dave sexually afield, setting him up with three women in his orbit: his distant girlfriend (an insipid cameo by Lyndsy Fonseca), his fantasy infatuation – Hit-Girl, and his ferocious animal lust – Night Bitch…

“Hi, why is no one listening to a word I say?
Hey… hey… up here…”

Ah, Night Bitch (Lindy Booth), a supergal on the Stars and Stripes team, with a torso so delectably deliriously delicious, it remains nakedly exposed for the better part of the movie, even though any combat specialist will attest that is probably the worst and most ignorant way to enter into lethal battle – unless you’re Michelle Rodriguez.

Two supporting roles shine with gravitas and poignancy; John Leguizamo as D’Amico’s “Alfred to his evil Batman,” and Garrett M. Brown as Dave’s father.

Donald Faison is hero Dr. Gravity, and Israeli bodybuilder Olga Kurkulina is villain Mother Russia; whereas Clark Duke was merely one of Kick-Ass’s nerds in the last film, now he’s in on the super action as Battle Guy; Evan Peters was Kick-Ass’s other nerd friend – but he actually graduated to a real super (Quicksilver in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST!) – replaced by dorkier Augustus Pew as Ass-Kicker.

KICK-ASS 2 is still about the hero’s journey – Dave trying to find his purpose – but I believe the untapped gem of the series is Hit-Girl. Her character is indoctrinated as a super from a young age; she knows nothing else, and of all the characters – heroes or villains – she alone is imbued with that psychosis inherent in all great superhero characters. Her polar opposite is Motherfucker, who embraces his pure evil. These two are the Batman and Joker of this franchise. Kick-Ass himself is, unfortunately, kinda the Robin.

END

Stop Dragon my Bewilderbeast around.

In HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2, Jay Baruchel returns as Hiccup the Viking with his small black dragon. And his pet named Toothless.

In this sequel to 2010’s HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, Hiccup faces off with an enemy attacking his village with a horde of dragons, and proves how wrong it is to amass an army of dragons, by, uh, amassing an army of dragons and defeating the enemy.

As you can tell, TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 is a little more mixed messagey than its predecessor, because it is, after all, dealing with apex carnivorous predators as pets to apex carnivorous predators. Man – and dragon – does not live on fish alone. Woven within this straightforward Might Is Right tale is the journey of Hiccup, from reconciling his family for one joyous moment, to accepting the burden of manhood.

His mother Valka was long lost; now discovered – as queen dragon rider of a faraway land (voiced by Cate Blanchett, whose introduction is ominous and cloud-rider cool, in an African tribal mask). Valka and her reunited husband, Chief Stoik (Gerard Butler), share but one romantic highland jig, to the joy of Hiccup (and the envy of Gobber – Craig Ferguson as Stoik’s lieutenant), and before we have time to envision the lopsidedness of tonight’s 3D Viking sex, the family unit is shattered once more.

Movie attempts to capture excitement in its opening scenes with the village of Berk’s teens (voiced by America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig) engaged in a dragon-riding race, pointedly screaming their relationships to each other, embarrassing fake camaraderie, reminding us of the worst Quidditch matches in HARRY POTTER.

Then it settles into what made the first movie so good, the quiet moments between a boy and his dragon. (And no, you won’t go blind.) Hiccup flies Toothless, his cute, expressive Night Fury, to the ends of the known earth, ever-extending his drawing of the world map, a cool concept for we who take the internet tubes for granted. Hiccup still has a prosthetic foot (from the last movie) and tries out his solo flying rig successfully. Soon he is joined by Astrid (Ferrera) and the only question in any of our heads is whether they’ve done it already, and by that, of course, I mean, milked his dragon.

Volka shows Hiccup her dragon haven, lazily ruled by the gigantic, wallow-plump Bewilderbeast (reminiscent of the creature in the Little Talks video from Of Monsters and Men). Such a big fuzzy cutie.

“Mmmm… Bewilderbeast want marshmallows… Bring for to eat!”

Into this perfect world of training your dragon, night furies and plasma blasts (okay, maybe you will go blind if you’re doing all three), Hiccup’s character is forced to grow when Drago Bloodfist (Djimon Hounsou) leads his dragon army to conquer and destroy Berk. Stoik wants to blockade the village, Volka wants to protect the haven – while Hiccup wants to “talk it out” with Drago. He learns the hard way there IS no talking with close-minded ignorance.

After Hiccup pleads nothing but platitudes (what I call “antelope trying to talk lion”), Drago brings his own black, evil yet oddly cute Bewilderbeast to battle Volka’s, like two skyscraper styracosaurs, while Stoik faces off with Drago in the foreground. The action is monumental, and once again, this DRAGON series shows its bravery by making major characters pay with their lives for Hiccup’s stubbornness. Though the movie advocates for peace via Hiccup’s words, it will soon enough turn to war for pragmatism.

Seems if the dragons are fighting on YOUR side, they’re doing it for the good of humanity, but if they’re on the OTHER side, well, that’s mind control!…

Toothless and the other dragons are won over by Hiccup’s niceness or ethics or his plasma-spitting dragon – whatever – and we have to admit that under the contradictory messages of war begetting peace and masters begetting freedom, it is quite touching when Hiccup is hailed as the returning chief with Toothless as his “Alpha to protect them all.”

Now will somebody please check on my piggy-fat Bewilderbeast?

END

Dragon fapping– I mean, flapping.

Spanking the Dragon.

Should I assume HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a sex manual on controlling premature ejaculation? Oh, a cartoon about a Viking boy that learns understanding and tolerance after befriending a dragon. (Still, that blond chick’s pretty hot for a cartoon; ‘scuse me while I train my dragon…) TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is Dreamworks, but like the greatest Pixar productions, it has heart and soul. And fire.

Young Viking Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) lives on the faraway island of Berk, which is regularly terrorized by dragons. Consequently, all the Vikings are geared towards defending themselves against the winged, fire-breathing invaders. All except Hiccup, who would rather invent things.

“Hrrrmph? Scooby Snacks?”

During a dragon raid one night, with one of his inventions – a giant slingshot – Hiccup shoots down a Night Fury (a fierce mythic dragon that none have actually seen). No one believes him. The next day, unbeknownst to his village, he finds the injured Night Fury and tends to its recovery. All the while wondering why these apparently faithful, intelligent creatures are so maligned.

The dragon, which Hiccup dubs Toothless, is a cross between a dog and an axolotl, jet-black, cute, expressive. To mend Toothless’s damaged tail from Hiccup’s slingshot, Hiccup designs a mechanical tail rudder, and together they learn to fly again, as dragon and rider. A montage of the boy and dragon growing closer, yet still distrusting of each other, with funny little vignettes showing off Toothless’s vast array of emotions, until one day – a spark of magic – Hiccup puts his hand out tentatively and Toothless moves his face forward into it. A “moment” between them – then Toothless pulls away. Excellent.

The film is filled with moments like this that catch us off guard. Hiccup’s father is Chief Stoik the Vast (the unmistakable brogue of Gerard Butler), who laments that Hiccup is a girlyman, pushing him into Dragon Academy to learn how to battle dragons, taught by blacksmith Gobber (Craig Ferguson, two steps further than Butler into indistinguishable brogue). Hiccup does want to make his father proud, but in a way that his father cannot grasp – he wants to show the village that dragons can be their allies.

This leads to another “moment” that sparkles. Hiccup discovers why the dragons raid the island intermittently – to pay tribute in food and livestock to an ominous presence on another island. Stoik discovers that island of dragons and plans to raid it – to kill all the dragons at their source – against Hiccup’s pleas and warnings. During this argument, Stoik proclaims, “You’re not my son!” and storms outside, with a look of resolve on his face as he strides to organize the raid, tempered with a sudden fleeting disconsolate look that says in wordless anguish, “What have I done?” For a brief second, his eyes are bereft, shocked at the soul-crushing insult he himself visited upon his only son, then he flenses that “weakness” for the task at hand. An amazing moment! That cartoon deserves a Golden Globe!

Hiccup’s crush is blond, blue-eyed warrior chick Astrid (America Ferrera), but she’s only interested in slaying dragons. (Do we refer to that sex manual for this psychological allegory?) The clique of friends is voiced by various comedians: Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig.

The key to the movie is voiced inadvertently by one of the Viking boys, who muses, “Imagine if you could get into a dragon’s head, then you could destroy it from the inside!” Not realizing that once you get into someone’s head, you gain understanding of their point of view. TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (from the book by Cressida Cowell) is all about Hiccup getting into his dragon’s head, assimilating dragon culture so well that, in the final battle, he leads a force of kids-on-dragons – dragons that used to be considered expendable training animals for them to slay.

The dragon designs are all extreme heads and torsos and colors, a combination of Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are and medieval hallucination.

In the grand tradition of gigantic monsters – the Kraken, the Rancor, the Balrog – the sinister king dragon is a massive masterwork of ferocious design, and the final battle is a nail-biting, emotional fracas.

TRAIN YOUR DRAGON does follow a predictable story arc – until its last scene, where it once again shocks us with its brave story decision. Tears may edge your eyes as Hiccup wakes after the final battle. With a prosthetic foot, created by the blacksmith, created to slot into his dragon harness. Toothless helps him walk. Not only does this scene perfectly balance the scenes where Hiccup helped Toothless with the prosthetic tail rudder, it also highlights a very modern solution. Whereas we are used to heroes always concluding a battle with maybe a cut above their right eye (cough–Bruce Willis) or an arm in a sling (cough–DIRTY DOZEN) – all healable wounds – this movie opens our minds to the acceptance of a hero crippled for life, yet making the best of it!

Thankfully, his dragon was untouched.

END

Serious Actors Seriously Acting.

Disgusting Inappropriate Filthy Hilarious Hellspawn Godsend.

Specifically designed to make you call your Congressman and complain, MOVIE 43 will offend, distress, embarrass, infuriate, ejaculate, and give you anal warts.

Not your average ensemble cast movie where everyone is trying to be more serious than their peers in order to win that Golden Globe, MOVIE 43 takes its A-Listers, jams them into gross-out vignettes so funny that you will miss half the raunchy dialogue from laughing so hard… and gives them anal warts.

A bedraggled Dennis Quaid pitches a movie idea at studio exec Greg Kinnear. We launch into a series of vignettes that are supposed to be this movie – returning intermittently to this throughline where Quaid becomes so desperate with the obsequious Kinnear that it turns into a hostage situation, Quaid trying to extort funding out of Kinnear at gunpoint. Seth McFarlane, Will Sasso and Common also squeeze into this storyline.

Meanwhile, the R-rated vignettes bludgeon us with dialogue as sharp as the boxcutters used to hijack the 9-11 planes (too soon?), over insane little plots so deformed they will make Republicans rethink their views on abortion (too mongoon?).

1) Kate Winslet on a blind date with Hugh Jackman the Chinballian (well, that’s actually the species name for the alien from MEN IN BLACK 2 – but you immediately get the picture, right?). And everyone in normal society is quite nonchalant about Hugh’s hairy naked scrotum and testicles hanging where his Adam’s apple should be. Everyone except Winslet, who makes the ooweh! vomit sound, so she’s aces in my book.

2) Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts home-school their son, giving him all the alienation, bullying and loneliness required from school life; mum Naomi schooling him in his first awkward high school kiss. It would be awesomely hot if it weren’t awesomely wrong. And awesomely hot anyway.

3) Anna Faris, after a year of dating boyfriend Chris Pratt thinks it’s time to move to the next phase – being pooped on. Not “shitting” – you shit on a whore, as J.B. Smoove points out – but you “poop” on someone you love.

4) Emma Stone and Kieran Culkin (so much more street cred than Macauley!): vital, urgent teens at a checkout counter, who need to be inside each other if only they could curb their vital, urgent hate for each other.

5) The iBabe – a naked hottie robot that plays music, with the fan to keep her circuitry cool located in her “vagi-port.” Aasif Mandvi and Kate Bosworth try to explain to clueless CEO Richard Gere why the iBabe company is fending off so many lawsuits from young boys getting their fingers chopped off.

6) Robin the Boy Wonder in full costume (Justin Long) tries to speed-date, with the specter of Batman (Jason Sudeikis, also in full cosplay) lurking around every corner. “He makes me wear this outfit!” whines Robin, as Batman cockblocks him with Lois Lane (a smoking hot Uma Thurman) and Supergirl (Kristen Bell), who apparently has mungabush.

7) Chloe Grace Moretz (oh my God! Truly the most beautiful woman in the world right now!), has her first period on a date with young Jimmy Bennett (growing up in front of us on film; remember him as Young Kirk in STAR TREK 2009?), while older brother Christopher Mintz-Plasse goes bananas trying to find something to suffice as a tampon. Then insouciant father Patrick Warburton walks in and proves why all men are pigs.

8) Gerard Butler as a Leprechaun captured by Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott, who want his pot of gold. What a potty mouth on that tiny fucker!

10) Stephen Merchant (THE OFFICE) and Halle Berry on a first date, playing Truth Or Dare. By the time Merchant surgically turns into an Asian man on a dare, it’s probably gone too far…

11) Coach Terrence Howard in a 1959 film about the First Negro High School Basketball Team, assuring the desperately scared black team, “You’re black, that’s why you’re going to win.” “You mean we gotta give 110%, coach?” “Not 110% – 50%, 3%! And you’re still gonna win!” “You mean if we follow in the footsteps of the lord?–” “No, not the lord! They’re white, you’re black – this is basketball!” As an example of why they are destined to win, Howard asks one of the boys to take out his foot long dick and wave it around. If only that scary white team wouldn’t come into their locker room and taunt the poor Negroes with their pasty skin and small dicks…

12) In the grandest Looney Tunes tradition of combining mischievous cartoon mascots with live action, Beezel the cartoon cat despises Elizabeth Banks getting between him and his master Josh Duhamel. Beezel will do anything to crush kill destroy Banks while he wanks to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit. But then, don’t we all wank to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit?

There’s nothing deep in MOVIE 43 (except maybe one of those foot long dicks); written, and directed by various teams, each working on their own vignette, it’s constructed purely to destroy liberty and sobriety. An overwhelming undertaking, my question is, Who oversees the whole shebang? Each vignette even had its own editor and producer, so who was at the top of the dirty pile cutting this all together? Oh, and my other question is, Will there be a sequel – and will MOVIE 44 be blasphemous enough to burn off these anal warts?…

END

Cuddly Carnage.

“Okay, you cunts. Let’s see what you can do now!”

Call me damaged goods, but I’m in love with Hit-Girl. And if her challenge above is how we approach every moviegoing experience, the moment 11-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz (as Hit-Girl) utters that taunt, the movie proves itself an irreverent, unrepentant, ruthless runaway rocket. In my pants.

Based on a comicbook by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., KICK-ASS is an assault on our superhero complacencies; an adult superhero movie about kid superheroes. Satire, comedy, treachery, anarchy. ULTRA-VIOLENCE. Don’t bring the kids. The heroes may be young but they are not role models. It is for adults to understand this is a spoof on vigilante justice. Even Christopher Nolan’s “dark” BATMAN movies dilute violence for PG-13 consumption, but Matthew Vaughn‘s R-rated KICK-ASS steers into the curve of carnage.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a teen superhero-comics geek, dons a costume to stalk the night and deter small-time crime as “superhero” Kick-Ass. In the real world of actual street criminals Kick-Ass is an untrained, unmustered naif and gets his ass kicked quite thoroughly – until a chance encounter with hoods in a public place launches him onto YouTube. Word spreads around the community and Kick-Ass’s credibility soars simply through the act of the word spreading – which is a commentary on our Heidi Montag Snooki Omarosa culture: that someone who is inept at something can gain credibility for that selfsame thing for the sole reason of being famous.

When Kick-Ass unwittingly walks into another thug situation he cannot handle, he meets real superheroes. And Hit-Girl saves his ass being kicked yet again by appearing in a blaze of underage glory with her c-words on stun. And steals the movie right out from under the green-clad dorky title character.

Hit-Cuke

I know it’s wrong that my groin aches so badly for her but – *I* didn’t dress her in that cute leatheress outfit with the indigo wig and schoolgirl skirt; I didn’t plant those filthy utterances between her cherrybomb lips. Do her parents know where she is and what script she’s reading? And how it affects the groins of grown men? Really, do you need Howard Stern to tell you this? Hotter than even Natalie Portman in LEON, *I* didn’t write her as the Sexy Assassin; athletic tigress, leg-lopping with quarterstaff blades, full frontal skewering with pig-sticking machetes, point-blank shootings, lethal martial artist – not in any way sanitized for cuddlier viewing.

Sometime in the next seven years, she’s going to make some pedophile a very happy man… Vilify not my informed observation of the Hollywood meat-grinder machine, while there are priests out there grinding altar boy meat without any Hollywood excuse, rationalizing their own deviancy with, “I didn’t ask them to wear those angelic boy-dresses…”

Hit-Girl is backed by her father, another superhero named Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), who has devoted his life to molding his daughter into the perfect killing machine. Cage was once almost cast as Superman post-Reeve; here he gets to dress as a Batman analog, and though his costume might resemble Bale’s dark knight, his fiendish delivery is most certainly Adam West. In the funniest superhero rendition ever, he seems to be amusing himself alone when he nonchalantly refers to the inept Kick-Ass as Ass-Kick throughout the movie. And when he himself needs to kick ass, he does it in a way that flounces our capes like Christmas…

Now I’m not advocating for or against vigilantism – that’s a whole ‘nother discussion – but if vigilante justice is going to be enforced, THIS is the way it should be done: we see Big Daddy tearing through a warehouse full of thugs in the most violent superhero sequence ever committed to film. We accept this kind of behavior from our “regular” heroes (Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone), but somehow onscreen superheroes have been stultified to pander to the supposed kids who read their graphic novels. Not any more, as Big Daddy goes knifing, shooting, exploding, neck-breaking, ramming through assailants like a street fighter with no rules. That faux-Batman visual is dynamite; efficient, clinical, final, we realize this is how the actual Batman should be portrayed in this modern age. Christopher Nolan – let’s step up and embrace the thunder!

Most R-rated movies don’t earn their rating. I’ll say it again: KICK-ASS is not for kids. No bad guys crawl out of crashed vehicles or hold their throbbing heads after a kicking; people actually die here, usually gruesomely. KICK-ASS also shows us consequences of being inept: when Kick-Ass steps out as flamboyant hero for the first time, he gets stabbed, and takes months to recover. The gutless MPAA also stamp their booties when kids are imperiled – here, the very first shot fired is point-blank at the chest of Chloe Moretz by Nic Cage, demonstrating the force of a bullet on her Kevlar vest. (There’s bound to be some idiot on NothingToxic.com who is going to try this – and they’ll blame Judas Priest or Twisted Sister at his funeral.)

Mark Strong is the villain who runs the city, Christopher Mintz-Plasse his nerdy son who fakes being the superhero Red Mist to draw out the real superheroes. Pudgy Clark Duke is Dave’s geek friend and Lyndsy Fonseca is Kick-Ass’s Lana Lang.

The trailers and the music video (We Are Young by Mika) misrepresent KICK-ASS as a feel-good action-comedy about goodness prevailing against evil, but the movie is dark, vicious and oft-times morbid – to the filmmakers’ credit. At one point Kick-Ass says, “With no power comes no responsibility.” As funny as that sounds, the movie takes a grim turn when his irresponsibility betrays the heroes; when the audience realizes that superhero-ing is truly hard to maintain because villains must match the heroes’ superiority with evil just as extreme; that violence begets violence.

The message which will be largely missed is that simply tying a towel around your neck and swishing about with good intentions does not a superhero make. You have to have the chops to back it up. And the force of will to pursue the violence wherever it may lead, whether that be the death of criminals or the death of loved ones. The dark side of vigilantism laid bare.

Very rarely will you ever see these words issuing from my big-tongued mouth, but I’d love to see a sequel. If for nothing else, to watch my darling Hit-Girl grow into her leather.

With those cherrybomb lips she tells Kick-Ass about the Mayor’s signal for calling on her and Big Daddy – a giant searchlight that he shines in the sky, “It’s in the shape of a giant cock.” Ooooh, God! That runaway rocket just exploded. In my pants.

END

Old rockstars never die – they just become movie references.

Any movie that is such homage to KISS can’t be all that bad. KISS is, after all, the role model for four generations of rock bands.

Beth, Rock and Roll All Night, Love Gun, Detroit Rock City – sung or heard as source music; a KISS pinball machine; Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd talking about how no one likes KISS, not even Paul Stanley; Scott educating young Bobb’e J. Thompson about two Jews who wore makeup and sang songs about tapping women and became millionaires; the four principals dressing as KISS for the final medieval battle… Who wrote ROLE MODELS? Gene Simmons?!

There’s less KISS in the last KISS album.

David Wain directs ROLE MODELS adequately, from a story written by Paul Rudd, Wain himself and a few others, about energy drink spokesman Danny (Rudd), who travels from school to school with his mascot Wheeler (Seann William Scott), who one day goes postal and is assigned community service along with his mascot.

They end up at a mentoring school, run by demented Jane Lynch, Rudd taking on a nerdy teen with a craze for medieval role-playing (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, still McLovin), Scott assigned a young black kid with a big mouth (Bobb’e J. Thompson, a little keg of dynamite). Effectively teaming the alienated adult with the alienated kid and the outlaw adult with the outlaw kid.

Elizabeth Banks is Rudd’s ex-gf and lawyer, simply glowing like she’s just been tapped by KISS.

Plot follows Rudd and Scott as they arc toward becoming real mentors, rather than simply doing their time for the state. It’s mildly funny and mostly vacuous, the most fun coming from all the KISS references.

And like I said, any movie this rife with my role models can’t be all that bad. Or maybe it can.

END

We all remember the first time we considered sharing a condom.

Superbad: The Quest for Piece.

It’s juvenile. It’s simple. It’s stupid. But it’s so good, it’s SUPERBAD. For the Now Generation of nerds.

Cuker Bad

The age-old tale of three underage dorks on a quest for alcohol and chicks in one eventful night, where life happens while they’re trying to live it. We’ve seen this all before (DAZED AND CONFUSED, 1993; THE STONED AGE, 1994), yet there is an edginess to the way this tale is told (by writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and director Greg Mottola, produced by Judd Apatow). All previous dork-to-chick movies now lack any bite when held up to SUPERBAD’s bullet-train urgency, modern crudeness and razorburn truths, like a bear trap slamming over your scrote.

High schoolers Seth (Jonah Hill), Evan (Michael Cera) and Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) try to seal their transition to college with drunken flings with the girls they lust after from afar. Very afar. Clueless to the wonders of women, their naive haplessness drives SUPERBAD.

Following the trend of portly heroes like Jack Black, Jonah Hill brings a charisma to the classic dork like a big ole hilarious charging rhinoceros. In just a scant year, he went from the unpopular kid in ACCEPTED (his most famous line of sycophantic, unfunny dialogue, “Ask me about my wiener!”) to being the wrecking ball in SUPERBAD, with all the best lines: “You know when you hear girls go, ‘I was so shitfaced last night; I shouldn’t have fucked that guy!’? We could be that mistake!”

As vital and strangely Tony-Soprano-sexy as Hill makes his character, Michael Cera’s uber-nerd Evan is a walking “Kick Me” sign, and plays it so fearlessly I want to give him a wedgie throughout the movie.

Then there is McLovin. Simply McLovin. In order to buy alcohol, Fogell scores a fake ID in the name of McLovin. I doubt anyone will remember the actor’s name OR his character name after this, his debut film. The ultra-dweeb is elevated to badass party animal with the assistance of two very irresponsible, law-breaking, hooligan cops (co-writer Seth Rogen and Bill Hader: “We should be guiding his cock, not blocking it”). Forever McLovin.

The girls are merely flesh beacons (Emma Stone, all mature sensuality, and Martha MacIsaac, all perky natural ta-tas), but that’s how boys that age regard them anyway. So no foul.

We all remember the first time we came on Emma Stone’s elbow.

After pandemonium piled on pandemonium (Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold gets yet another run onscreen – ROCK STAR and INVINCIBLE come to mind – and Van Halen’s Panama accompanies the police car demolition!), Seth and Evan somehow make the Cool Kids’ party with stolen alcohol. But whereas they hoped to shatter their celibacy at this party, they find it is simply another misadventure that needs to be survived, and come to realize that they mean more to each other as best buds, than any poon they pursue.

They can relax with each other and express honest feelings, rather than constantly being “on” around females; bringing a bromosexual poignancy to that age-old adage: Bros before Hos.

Seth even carries the drunk Evan out of the party like his very own Ho.

The Hollywood Reporter actually chided SUPERBAD for not bravely going “all the way” in a sleeping bag scene where Seth and Evan declare their love for each other – and don’t go Brokeback. I guess two straight guys should suddenly go gay because it’s “in” to be “out” these days. I guess The Hollywood Reporter is as naive as the target audience for GIGLI, who believe every lipstick lesbian is just waiting for some solid Affleck man-tool to come along and pump her full of hetero…

In one of the truly bravest moves in the now pc-gutless, gayophilic Hollywood, SUPERBAD kept its characters straight – and allowed them the humanity to profess their love for each other without resorting to prurient homophobic gags or a homosexual encounter.

We all remember the first time we watched gay porn.

In the final scene, both Seth and Evan meet their intended chicks in the light of the next day at the mall. Uncomfortable apologies are made, with even more uncomfortable impromptu plans made to pair off, the boys finding themselves with the girls they wanted for so long. But instead of the movie wrapping like every maudlin teen romantic comedy that makes “getting the girl” the focus of existence, SUPERBAD continues its brave stance by making its final amazing scene Seth looking back longingly at Evan.

It comes upon us without warning. We think Seth will turn to his girl, but he keeps his gaze tentatively, sadly, on his best friend at the top of an escalator, while Evan does not seem to notice Seth’s look.

The boys never realize it, but the movie gives off the subtle message that to score the girl of your dreams, you don’t have to be duplicitous and get her drunk or be “on” your A-game with trite one-liners. You just have to experience life with her.

Life happening while you’re trying to live it.

END