Lucy reviews ... Kick-[REDACTED]

I've run into a little problem.  See, I'm not allowed to swear, but the movie I am about to review for you has a swear word in the title.  So when I was dictating this review to daddy, I told him to go ahead and edit it as he saw fit.  I'm apologizing in advance if this causes any confusion.

To intelligently discuss Kick-[REDACTED], you have to understand how it was made, and why it is a small miracle that the film is even playing in theaters right now.  See, no studio would touch the script with a ten foot pole.  Some outright rejected it.  Others wanted to make the characters older or water down the violence.  Instead of giving in to these idiots, director Matthew Vaughn independently financed the movie outside the broken studio system.  And then sold the final product back to them once test audiences started going nuts for it. 

So what's Kick-[REDACTED] about?  It's the story of teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) and his decision to become a superhero (codename: Kick-[REDACTED]) despite the fact that he has no powers.  It's also the story of Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (played by a delightfully wacky Nicolas Cage), a ruthless crimefighting father-daughter duo out to take down a local crime boss.

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with this movie, and the fact that none of them did is a testament to Matthew Vaughn.  He knows when to ease off the campiness and have something genuinely shocking happen.  The man manages to get a good performance out of Nicolas Cage, for God's sake.  That guy's been mailing it in for years.  But in Kick-[REDACTED], he infuses Big Daddy with genuine emotional depth and a truly bizarre Adam West-like quirkiness.  How can you cheer for a guy who has essentially raised his 11 year old daughter in a way that allows her to crush a guy in giant trash compactor?  He's pretty much robbed this girl of a childhood and turned her into a relentless killing machine named Hit Girl, yet we still empathize with him. 

And then there's Kick-[REDACTED] himself--an awkward, sort of annoying teenager with some sort of deranged desire to fight crime.  It seems like he's not really that into the whole truth and justice thing--he just wants to be a superhero for the sake of being a superhero.  What kind of person does that?  A slighly unbalanced one, that's who. Yet we care about this weirdo, and we can't help but get a little bit nervous every time he puts on his gear.  In the world of Kick-[REDACTED], it's a genuine possibility that this loser is going to get the crap beat out of him and a knife in the gut.  In fact, that actually happens early on in the movie.

What's even more amazing is that this uneasiness about the well-being of Kick-[REDACTED] and Hit Girl continues throughout the WHOLE movie.  Just as you get used to the idea that Hit Girl is pretty much unstoppable, she gets into a brutal fistfight and you all of a sudden remember that she's an 11 year old girl who, without her kitana blades and guns, is not a physical match for a grown man. 

So should you see it?  Well, let me ask you this.  Are you American?  Are you a bed-wetting, politically correct namby-pamby?  If your answers to those questions are yes and no, respectively, then you should see Kick-[REDACTED].  It's unapologetically fun, and it is hard evidence that movie-making can still be fun.

Want to get a taste of what Kick-[REDACTED] is all about?  Just check out this clip featuring a nice father-daughter moment between Big Daddy and Hit Girl:

 

Matthew Vaughn has found himself a genuine star in Chloe Moretz.  Watching this 11 year old girl cut her way through a room full of thugs with nothing but a kitana blade is more fun than anything I've seen on screen in years. 

In fact, Hit Girl is my new hero.  I asked my daddy if I could be Hit Girl for Halloween, and he said yes.  We haven't broken the news to mommy yet.  As far as she's concerned, I'm still going as Elizabeth Lambert, a truly great soccer player for New Mexico State:

Lucy reviews .... Next by James Hynes

"You lost me 40 million Deutche Marks, Hank!  40 million!  You know what, Hank?  You're fired.  

Pack up your things and don't let the door hit you on the way out, deadbeat.".  

After a long day at work, there's nothing I like more than kicking back, enjoying a juice box, and reading a good book.  And boy do I have a treat for you.  Next: A Novel by James Hynes.

Next: A Novel follows middle aged protagonist Kevin Quinn as he spends a day in Austin, Texas on a job interview.  Boring, right?  And even worse, Kevin is a self-absorbed jerk (strike one), a pinko commie liberal (strike two), and an editor at the University of Michigan (strike three).  So James Hynes has really dug himself into a hole almost immediately.  A hole so deep, I thought, that even James Joyce would have a hard time writing himself out of it.

Well, James Hynes is no James Joyce, but he does pull off something amazing in Next: A Novel.  He makes the mundane interesting, and then pulls off an ending that a lesser writer would have fumbled (I'm looking at you, Dan Brown).

What's even more amazing is that he makes a Michigan employee sympathetic.  I didn't even think they had humans up there!  But by the end of Next: A Novel, I was actively rooting for him to straighten his personal life out and find some sort of solace, whether it's in Michigan or Texas.

I am awarding Next: A Novel 8 out 10 Stuffed Pink Bunnies (I'm a bit too old for rattles now).  Next: A Novel is available now, so run out and pick up a copy today. 

After I finished Next: A Novel, I went out and bought two of James Hynes' other novels: Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel and Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (James Hynes apparently likes to make sure you know what you're getting, whether its a novel or a tale).  I'll let you know how those are once I finish them. 

My thoughts on the ending are after the jump, so beware of spoilers.

I'm Back!

I have a great excuse, I swear.  See, I've been doing a real bang-up job of tearing the house up.  The messes I make surprise even me sometimes.  It drives mommy crazy!  So back at the end of January, my mommy and daddy put their noggins together and decided that they would finish the basement so I could have MORE room to make messes in.

Real smart, I know.

So how does this relate to blogging?  Well, I count on my daddy to do all the typing.  I just dictate.  But he's been busy for the last two months trying to get the basement done.  In other words, he's basically ignored me and my blogging demands.  It was horrible. 

But we're past all that now.  I'm back, and badder than ever.  There will be more mailbags.  There will be more reviews.  There will be 100% more punching eagles in the face.

100%  more games!

More abuse of the infirm!

100% more Bailey!

So stay tuned!