Plot
After showing the world that superheroes aren’t necessarily fiction with his crime-fighting persona Kick-Ass, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and super ninja come bloodthirsty, foul-mouthed child-shaped WMD Mindy ‘Hit Girl’ Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) are trying to lead normal lives. Sort of. The world is different place now however – with new heroes pouring from the woodwork, including aged avenger Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carey) – and one-time hero sidekick Chris Damicco (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has sworn super-villain vengeance for the death of his father.
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| This is how your brain punishes you if you eat too much cheese before beddy-byes. |
Review
Kick-Ass 2 was always going to be fighting an uphill battle (possibly against an army of suited goons to the tune of some obscure 80s punk metal). The original Kick-Ass was a breath of fresh, rebellious, ultra-violent air; comic-book movies are so formulaic as to render the word redundant and Kick-Ass reveled in its unique sense of frenetic anarchy.
With both original director Matthew Vaughan and original writer Jane Goldman AWOL on the sequel, Kick-Ass 2 was dicing with the sharp repugnant edges of critical boo-hooing before it started: too similar and ‘boo, it’s a copy’; too different and ‘boo, it’s lost its identity.’
As it turns out, Kick-Ass 2 is neither of these extremes. And yet…boo, where’d the heart go?
For the first hour or so Kick-Ass 2 picks up so flawlessly from the be-jetpacked, Presley serenaded conclusion of its predecessor that the last 3 years feel like little-more than an extended ad-break, albeit still shorter than the arduous jingled vistas of an average afternoon on Comedy Central.
3 years have passed in the film universe as well and many and more loonies and outcasts across the broad and scary spectrum of society have come sprinting all bandy-legged and latexed into the world of superheroes. Swift removal of previous love interest Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca) aside, it’s business as usual for our returning heroes. Dave ‘Kick Ass’ Lizewski remains the affable everyman while Mindy ‘Hit Girl’ Macready is every bit the potty-mouthed, murderous, scene-stealer as before. Albeit less of a screen revolution.
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| You could wax comedic about Chloe Grace Moretz...but she'd probably murder you where you stand. |
Jim Carey’s Colonel Stars and Stripes is the obvious Big Daddy surrogate figure here, but his influence is a mere drop in his predecessor’s ocean of eccentric weirdness. Carey has been quick to distance himself from the film on moral grounds, a move that could have proved immensely damaging had his character been given much to do. As it is he’s little more than a short-lived underused quirk to bring the bumbling Justice Forever group of assorted social oddities together.
Talking of said social oddities, Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison) with his anti-gravity baseball bat is endearingly goofy and effortlessly fun while new filly Night Bitch (Lindy Booth) is largely pointless eye-candy. All in all, the eclectic diversity of Justice Forever is measurable as both a narrative and a visual cacophony of mutual weirdos.
Everything that made the first film what it was – the violence, language, attitude, energy, soundtrack and general absurdities – are all present and accounted for, warped by the sequel lense that demands ‘bigger and better’…and so are therefore naturally just a little worse off, stretched beyond capacity rather than bulked up for the next level.
However, from the 2nd act onwards, the tone shifts and what was once a comedic subversion of genre tropes painted in the blood of a thousand thugs to Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation becomes an unsettlingly intimate, tonally mismanaged affair. It’s only for a few sequences, but it’s enough to potentially sour the entire experience.
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| 'So wait, my pay-cheque's banked already? Yeah, fuck this film.' |
Watching the majestically ridiculous Mother Russia brutalise an entire street-full of suitably inept cops in an escalating orgy of creative bloodlust? Fantastic, more please. Watching two roid-head thugs assault and murder a defenseless elderly man? Um…not so much. Watching a group of equally dithering, absurdly costumed, loveable losers, loving life and fighting crime with all the clinical skill of a drunk toddler to the rousing cry of ‘The Saints Go Marching In’? Yes! That, that and more of that. Watching a helpless woman’s potential rape being played for a crass cock joke?...yuck. All of these scenes happen within 20 minutes of each other, sequencing amongst others, and may very well completely decimate the tone and enjoyment-factor of the film depending on your capacity for stomaching discomforting violence.
It’s a real and surprising shame. Kick-Ass (original and sequel) revels in ultra-violence, a glorious litany of luminous buckets of comic book crimson, broken bones, dismembered limbs and many and more ghastly delights. What made the first so uniquely and riotously enjoyable was it’s shameless and obviously comical treatment of screen violence without ever losing that sense of heart (Big Daddy…sob). And until that mid-point 20-minute period where the villains dive headlong into villainy, Kick-Ass 2was right on the same track. Quite why it all went wrong is up for debate – though the missing influences of Vaughan and Goldman certainly have something to do with it – but go wrong it does and despite the relative strength of the climactic warehouse blow-out (though it’s got nothing on the skyscraper jet-pack caper) Kick-Ass 2 struggles to recover from the ugly smear it leaves.
And yet, Kick-Ass 2 is an undeniably, shamelessly fun experience. It struggles to live up to its forerunner (as it was always going to) but juggles that delicate sequel balancing-act well: paying homage to its heritage while adding enough new strings to its military-grade bow. Case-in-point: Mindy’s struggling to handle the evils of High School Life, complete with a pop-music reference epic in unexpectedness. Most impressively, the film manages to recover from the loss of Mark Strong. Mintz-Plaase is a talented comedian, but his ability to pull off 'big-bad' was doubtful to say the least. Thankfully, in his oedipal reincarnation as The Motherfucker, he's zipped together a villain as childishly inept as he is crudely cruel.
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| This year's annual meeting of BDSM maniacs was going to be a big one. |
Verdict
Less of a barnstorming success than before, but still successful in its own right. Repulsive sequences put aside (and an unwillingness to do so is understandable) Kick-Ass 2 has enough heart, soul, backbone and bloody giblets to support its own legacy, just ignore the critical panning and intellectual dong-comparisons.
4/5
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