The New Yorker has decided to take up arms against Kick-Ass (you can find our review here).  In the review the writer clearly thinks less of comic books and pop culture as a whole than normal high literary fair you’d find in books.  What’s fascinating is the reviewer clearly aware the movie is based off of a comic book writes as if director Matthew Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman are responsible for the entire plot and story, but I digress.

In a rant that condemns everyone from the adapters of the comic to the MPAA, the reviewer attempts to sound intelligent about his subject with lines such as:

“Kick-Ass” is violence’s answer to kiddie porn.

I wonder if the reviewer “gets” the movie at all?  The sophistication that the Anthony Lane mocks in the beginning of the article is lost on him.  I wasn’t a fan of the movie, but understood it’s point by showing such violence depicted by such young individuals a point clearly lost on Lane.

The review focuses on the children committing violent acts as if the age of the transgressor matters.  Is it any better if a 30 year old woman says the “c” word?  Or was Pulp Fiction’s violence brilliant only because it was acted out by adults?  That’s part of the point of Kick-Ass, a fact Lane in his clear snobbishness chooses to overlook.