Kick-Ass

I barely missed the world premiere of this at SXSW, with my wife and I ten people back in line when they cut it off at the impressively-large Paramount.  (We instead saw the enjoyable Erasing David.)  I understand it rocked with a theater of enthusiasts, both there and at a pre-screening at last December's Butt-Numb-A-Thon.  Alas, I've been relegated to an opening-night screening at the not-so-cool Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, a corporate-owned theater about as far into the Texas suburbs as you can be and still be in Austin.

To enjoy this film, you have to turn off your higher brain and just enjoy the kick-ass action, and that works best in an audience able to do the same.  It's less comfortable when you're surrounded by parents unable to grasp the meaning of a R rating.  (At one point, in response to some dialog by the 13-year-old co-star, the young boy in the seat next to me leans over to his mom and asks, "What does c*&% mean?")  I think most of the audience hated it, and unfortunately that dragged it down.  See it with friends near a college or somewhere else that everyone will get it.

Kick-Ass
2010, 117 minutes, directed by Matthew Vaughn