Usually when a movie comes out that is based on a comic or book I enjoy I am able to keep a mental disconnect.  It isn’t always easy, but I have been known to enjoy movies that make a mockery of the original source material.  This one however left me wondering at first if my judgment was too harsh because I loved the source material so much.

The first half of Kick Ass was incredible and followed the comic fairly closely.  There were differences that come from being a different sort of media.  These minor changes early on for pacing and media adaptation were actually very welcome though.  For example the trailers were going to give away the existence of HitGirl so there was no chance of having her first appearance being as impactful as the comic.  They had to find another way to shock the audience.

So as the movie went on I found myself getting more and more excited.  It was funny, violent, and captured the feel of the comic perfectly.  Then everything changed.  There is one scene where the movie starts to vary drastically from the comic.  After this scene for me it seemed that characters quit making logical sense.  A movie and story that had strived for harsh realism and consequences suddenly changed to a vehicle for wish fulfillment.  Basically an incredible movie that was well on the way to being my favorite movie of the year turned to utter crap.

So at this point I had to ask myself a tough question.  Did the movie really get bad as soon as it quit following the comic book, or did I just get upset with?  Well in this case I was watching the movie with my wife who has not read the comic so I found myself with a control subject.  Sure enough she also felt the movie went from incredible to crap in 60 seconds flat.  Without knowing where it varied from the comic she pointed out the exact scene as when it quickly got unbelievable.  So at this point I feel confident in saying that Kick Ass had the best first hour of any movie I have seen this year, but also had the worst second hour.  No matter how good the trailers are I recommend avoiding this movie.