Geeks On Film: Kick Ass Is Not For Children
Hey fellow Geekadelphians. It’s your friendly neighborhood sporadic blogger Dustin. Now as you are all well aware, today sees the release of Kick-Ass. I reviewed the film a while back, and Dan’s review will appear online shortly but I wanted to discuss something else about the film. I wanted to discuss why you’d be a horrible parent if you took your child to see Kick Ass. Now you may be an awesome parent, but if you take your child to this movie without doing the slightest of research, you fail at life. It also means you never read my previous article on Film Going Etiquette 101. Hit the jump and lets get down to why you shouldn’t take your kids to see this movie.
1) It’s Rated R for A Reason – Sure your kid has probably gotten a peek of the film on youtube with its countless redband and international trailers, but the stuff in those promos is only the tip of the iceberg. While the violence is pretty over the top, making the audience cheer more than groan and wince, it’s still pretty gruesome stuff. Which makes it awesome. For adults!
2) It’s Not Marketed to Kids – There was never an advertisement for Kick-Ass on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or any of the hundreds of channels aimed at young children. There are no Happy Meal toys to be collected. There may have been some ads shown during the Adult Swim lineup, which your child should definitely not be watching unless accompanied by nobody, because they shouldn’t be watching Adult Swim! Geez, what’s wrong with you people?! Moving on…
3) Don’t Let Bright Colors Fool You – For whatever reason, I think older folks look at brightly colored objects and instantly think it’s for kids. If you’ve seen any of the marketing material, Kick-Ass has embraced a more colorful palette than The Dark Knight’s depressing blue color scheme. I think that’s where the mix up is happening here. If you walked out of How To Train Your Dragon and saw the Kick-Ass poster you may not have even noticed the R rating but instead saw the pretty colors and thought it would be a great fun film to see with the whole family. Hopefully you, dear parent, have seen enough reviews during the day that made you realize the kids may have to stay home this time.
And Finally
4) It’s Called Kick-Ass- I’m 24 and I wouldn’t dare say the word “ass” in front of my parents for fear of being smacked upside the head. Yet there I was in Brave New Worlds, overhearing a 10 year old girl say to her dad “I’m going to go see Kick Ass with my friends next weekend.” The father was completely oblivious to what Kick Ass was about ( not even doing a double take at the fact that his daughter just said Kick-Ass) until my buddy Brian informs him that it’s rated R for a very good reason. The father thanked Brian, left the store and told his daughter she wouldn’t be seeing the film anytime soon. Crisis averted.
Now these few points are not me trying to tell you how to raise your kids or anything. Let’s be real here; there will be kids in the theater. And families may either walk out of this film disgusted or be too mesmerized by the awesomeness of Mark Strong and Chloe Moretz. Let me say that Kick-Ass is definitely an awesome movie to go see. However, it isn’t Spider-Man. People curse, lose limbs, get shot, butchered, burned, etc. The list goes on and on. Kick-Ass is an awesome film, but one that should be seen by the appropriate audience.
Actually, your article is inaccurate. I just witnessed an advertisement for Kickass on Nickelodeon at 7:30 pm on Sunday Aug 1, during Big Time Rush. I am very upset about it too! I thought better of Nick, but I can see that the almighty dollars rules again! You are naive if you think that they are not marketing this and many other R rated movies to kids!
How odd! Must be for the DVD. They definitely weren’t marketing this while it was in theatres.
I don’t think you saw this and if you did see it I’d think it was a mistake considering the word “ass” or even “Kick Ass” is never said on a Nickelodeon show. Even though a lot of shows on Nick are teen oriented, they couldn’t get away with this without some sort of commotion. So I guess we could wait and see if there’s any outrage during the week.
My article was specifically talking about the marketing of the film’s theatrical release. It was not advertised on children’s networks, except during cartoon network’s Adult Swim lineup, which again, your kids should not be watching in the first place. If you did see an advertisement for it, I could only assume it was a mistake or you were on another channel.
I’m definitely not naive about this film or any other film being marketed to kids. Because it hasn’t happened. PG 13 films maybe, but not R rated films. At least to my knowledge. If you have seen such advertisements, I think parents should do something about it. But again, I highly doubt this happened.