Kick-Ass 2
2013, 103 mins
R
Grade: D
For the record, I really like the first Kick-Ass film. A fun, meta exercise on super hero excess and comic books, it was subversive and viscerally fun, and well put together under the watch of Matthew Vaughn. Swap out Vaughn for Jeff Wadlow (Cry Wolf, Never Back Down), and suddenly you’ve got a picture that’s just long on ugly and low on fun. The ultra-violence on display lacks the mischief of its predecessor, and just feels brutal and wrong. Add in graphic vomit and diarrhea (I’m not kidding), and you’ve got a pretty gross two hours to kill.
It doesn’t help that the film has a title character that’s hardly interesting — Dave aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his curly moptop returns, semi-retired from the super hero life but missing it. Hoping to get back out there, he starts training with Mindy aka Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz, the best thing about the series in general). After a run in with some alley thugs, Mindy’s guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), forbids her to go out there again and encourages her to just be a teenager. Partnerless, Dave seeks out a ragtag team of civilian heroes, led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey, who was wise to distance himself from this thing, but makes the most of his limited screen time and adds a bit of welcome goofiness to the film). Meanwhile, Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse — Jesus, do all the actors in this thing have three word names?), now clad in his mother’s S&M gear and calling himself The Motherfucker, assembles a team of baddies to help him destroy Kick-Ass, who is responsible for killing his gangster father with a rocket launcher in the first film.
It’s with The Motherfucker that a lot of the film’s tonal problems and ugliness occur — in one particularly ill-advised and just plain uncomfortable scene, he threatens to “give some evil dick” to a female hero named Nightbitch, only to find he can’t get it up. I guess we’re supposed to laugh at a guy trying to rape a woman, but not being able to do so. Really, movie? Some may argue that it’s a send up of the super villain’s checklist of evil activities, but it seems like a bad place to mine for comedy.
The film also suffers when it holds its one interesting hero in check — Hit Girl spends most of the film texting Dave things like “Sorry, I made a promise” and “Can’t help you, hope you understand” while moping in her room, wrestling with trying to fit in at high school and keep her pledge to Marcus, or embrace her Hit Girl side. And when she finally does get out and let loose (like in an inventive van action sequence), it feels like too little too late. It’s like going to see a Batman movie where Batman just does Batman things for ten minutes and spends the rest of the time doing laundry. I can watch me do laundry. I want to watch Batman be Batman, ya know?
The rest of the cast is full of interesting actors hardly used — John Leguizamo is on hand for a bit in a thankless role, and Donald Faison plays another hero with lisping enthusiasm but doesn’t make much of an impression. And Ian Glen shows his American accent for one scene, instead of just scolding the Khalesi for an hour (Game of Thrones, anyone?).
Does this spell the end of the Kick-Ass franchise? Judging by its box office receipts, it probably does. I’m not sure if a third film would be able to capture what made the first so much good fun — but it can’t go much more wrong than this one does.
