Talk about guilty pleasures

Pretty tough for a 10-year-old.

So I watched Kick Ass last night. I know: It was released months ago and everybody’s already seen it. But that’s how I roll. I didn’t shell out for a big-screen TV and a Blu-Ray player so I could sit in a theater full of people fiddling with their phones. And don’t get me started about movie popcorn.

Short review: I liked it. Yeah, I totally get the controversy about having a 10-year-old girl curse like Dave Chappelle and kill more people than Stalin. And I’m not sure I care to see the same little girl getting shot, punched in the face and  hurled against a wall. But for what it is — a comic-book movie for adults — it’s pretty good. I rate it higher than any of the endless iterations of Batman.  I like the way it skewers the pretentiously serious comic-book movies while managing a witty script and engaging characters. I like the killer action sequences and I really like Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), even though I know that such a character pushes the envelope in a direction we really don’t want to go. It’s the Kill Bill direction: cute females deployed as killing machines, relying not on super-powers so much as a whole lot of handguns and edged weapons. Thanks for that, Quentin.

I hear there’s a sequel in the works, slated for 2012. By then Chloe Moretz will be 14 or 15 and a full-blown sex object in the Miley Cyrus mold, so I’m pretty sure this is the last Kick Ass movie I will see.  I’m a little squeamish about teenage sex objects.  Anyway, while I occasionally deign to check out a comic-book movie, I draw the line at comic-book movie sequels.

Still, by itself, Kick Ass is worth renting if you can suspend the feeling that its lethal, foul-mouthed young heroine further coarsens the culture. Me, I just remember walking past a schoolyard years ago and hearing younger girls use worse language. So I figure that train has left the station. You go, Hit Girl.