Kick-Ass (2010)

This movie established itself as a straight-up action film pretty quickly. It pretends to be more comedic for the first twenty minutes or so, but once teenager Dave (Aaron Johnson) decides to try stopping two car thieves who promptly stab him in the gut, you know this is a much more serious movie. And the great thing is that everyone involved treats it that way. The actors and director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, X-Men: First Class) bring their A-game. The action, especially Hit-Girl’s (Chloe Moretz) ambushes, is a blast to watch, but that’s not what makes the movie great. There’s legitimate emotional weight to it. The relationships between the characters and the growth they individually go through really bring it all together. It’s an excellent film.

4.5/5

Year One (2009)

So much wasted potential in this one.  Two hunter-gatherers (Jack Black and Michael Cera) are exiled from their tribe and in quick succession meet Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd), Abraham (Hank Azaria) and Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and venture to Sodom to try and free their clansmen from slavery.  So we advance from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age pretty quickly.  Historical quibbles aside, the movie just isn’t as funny as it could be.  It never goes into inanity or resorts to poop jokes.  Black, Cera, and Cross are formidable comedians.  In one sense, the movie suffers from too much plot, quite the opposite problem most comedies have.  It’s full of chuckles, but not greatly done.  I will always love Harold Ramis for giving us Groundhog Day, but this one misses the mark.

2/5