Kick-Ass 2
(15) 103mins
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Laboured sequel lacks the confidence and verve of the original but there are still some nuggets of delicious pleasure.
REVIEW
The original Kick-Ass was fun. If nothing else, the knowingly irreverent and wantonly shocking, story of a bunch of nobodies who wanted to be superheroes with their kids-can-be-cruel ethos brought us Hit Girl, the break-out, no-hold-barred, expletive swigging mini-pop in the form of Chloe Grace Moritz.
Sheesh, people got worked up about the use of the C-word, more than the use of the double-ended spear with which she lopped the limbs off the bad guys.
It was all about ordinary people – youngsters mostly – trying to emulate the fog-shrouded psycho-scapes of Batman, Spiderman et al and then doing double French and getting grounded.
But, you see, it wasn’t real. That was the point. They were talking about it being real but it was a movie, pulled together in tongue-in-cheek style by a wry English collective involving Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman.
Kick-Ass 2 wants to be really real. No, seriously. It’s all about who we are and where we’re going and an acknowledgement that if you prick them (with a shard of glass) do they not bleed (profusely).
So it goes wrong in the hands of new director Jeff Wadlow who has no confidence in his tone. Instead of having fun, they have issues. Instead of bad taste, there is cynicism. So when Hit Girl wanders off into another movie entirely (Mean Girls Do Misogyny), her revenge against the Queen Bees is not embarrassing but empty.
Not that this film isn’t without its fun-packed moments. With Mindy (Hit Girl) semi-retired, Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Dave (Kick-Ass) hooks up with the Justice Force (headed by a seething Jim Carrey) to wheedle out the worms from the Big Apple.
Then they come up against Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s super criminal, formerly Red Mist and with the unrepeatable name and a bottomless bank balance, who wants revenge on Kick-Ass for decking his dad with a bazooka.
Imagine the fight scene from Bugsy Malone only with nunchuks instead of splurge guns and that’s how it plays out, only with Some Lessons About Life grafted on to suggest sequel-essential “growth”.
Chloe Grace Moritz is the best thing in this movie that is as she was in the last but it’s a sign of the movie’s lack of evolution that, at 16, she’s outgrown the franchise.
Taylor-Johnson is suitably upright and doltish as Kick-Ass but whatever drew the pair of them back to a sequel is not evident in script, visuals or execution. No wonder Carrey washed his hands.
Bad taste, OTT violence and the sight of tweenies boffing bad guys can work – but when it’s stuck in a vacuum with nothing but itself to consume then the spectacle becomes voyeuristic and sits a little uneasily.
