Anyone can be a superhero-- as long as they have a swear word in their name. That’s the message of Kick-Ass 2, the sequel to the massively successful and critically praised 2010 comic adaptation. With character sporting names like Night Bitch and The Motherfucker, and featuring scenes involving creepy Oedipal complex moments, this is a movie that lets you know right from the beginning that it aims to disgust. But fortunately, it goes about it in a far better way than some films, even if it does have a weapon in it called the “Sick Stick,” which causes its victims to defecate out of both ends of their body. What I’m trying to say is... it’s a higher class of disgusting.
After the events of Kick-Ass, our hero is still patrolling the streets, now with a gang of other heroes that includes the aforementioned Night Bitch, a pair of hilariously suburban parents who got into the costumed hero thing in order to look for their son, and Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes. As much as I dislike Carrey, I have to admit that he was easily the best part of this movie. But he basically took over Nicolas Cage’s role as Big Daddy in the first movie, which means he had some big shoes to fill. Long story short-- he’s good, but nobody can measure up to a crazy Nic Cage performance. Also (spoiler alert), this fledgeling franchise seems to have one fatal flaw: It kills off its best characters long before the climax of the movie. So yes, just like Nic Cage in the first installment, Carrey dies a cool yet unceremonious death that leaves the audience with a feeling of “Okay... why am I still watching this now?”
Meanwhile, Cage’s daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Grace-Mortez) is struggling to give up her superhero life and fit in with the popular girls at her new high school. This is the weakest part of the film, as it takes the most insanely badass aspect of the original and turns her into a typical whiny teenager. That just about killed it for me, as the only two reasons I had for seeing this were essentially nonexistent for a big part of the movie. Hit Girl doesn’t actually do jackshit until the end, and Carrey dies like a bitch. So yeah... it’s a bit of a letdown.
Now onto the pros: As creepy as he is, I have to say that Christopher Mintz-Plasse KILLS it as The Motherfucker, the son of the mob boss who Kick-Ass blew up in the first movie. He’s out for revenge, but doesn’t have his inspiration until he accidentally kills his mom by electrocuting her in her tanning bed. After her death, he finds some creepy S&M shit in her closet and turns it into a superhero: THE MOTHERFUCKER. Yeah, it’s fucked. He’s wearing this ridiculous leather gimp suit that belonged to his mom... and he calls himself that? Ick. This guy has issues. But don’t get me wrong, he’s not a sympathetic villain at all, he’s a shit. Also, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is pretty good as Kick-Ass, even if the rest of the cast outshines him occasionally. I found it a little unbelievable that he could master all his karate kung-fu shit in only one montage, but that’s just me.
I wasn’t a fan of the first Kick-Ass movie, but it was entertaining. And I have to say, this one definitely delivers on that front. Sure, it’s stupid, gory, and loud, but that doesn’t make it any less of a wild ride. Really-- there’s a seven-foot-tall woman who wears an eyepatch and calls herself Mother Russia. Some of this stuff is just so wildly off-the-wall and imaginative, you can’t help but be entertained by it. I won’t give it points purely for being original, as it’s sometimes originally bad, but it is inventive. This is a movie that will never run out of ways to make you yell “WHAT?” But on some very basic levels, Kick-Ass 2 isn’t very good. For instance:
Even though the acting is good, the story is just a little overdone. Kick-Ass’s dad gets arrested by the police, and then he gets killed in prison. His funeral is then attacked by The Motherfucker’s army of supervillains. This part of the plot, and a lot of the other plot points, did away with the humor and levity of the first movie and brought some cold, hard violence to the table. Nothing against violence, but this movie is billed as an action-comedy, so it should have some FUCKING COMEDY! There are cool stunts (including Hit Girl absolutely ripping a van to SHREDS), but the dialogue is uninspired most of the time and the movie sometimes takes itself way too seriously.
There are some quotable lines, though. “I bet you just shit your pants.” “Yeah-- and I’m gonna wipe my ass with your face.” Now THAT is dialogue! But those one-liners, I’m sorry to say, do not carry the rest of the script. It’s cliched, all over the place, and leaves a lot of loose ends. For instance: I wanted the couple looking for their kid to actually FIND the kid. And what happened to Kick-Ass’s girlfriend from the first movie? She shows up briefly, but it’s almost as if she didn’t want anything to do with this sequel and made the writers leave her character out of the script. Then they shoehorned Night Bitch in, who felt a little too much like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Transformers 3-- they replaced one girl with another, but without much explanation. These little discrepancies add up, and it makes a lot of the movie very unenjoyable.
Final Score for Kick-Ass 2: 4/10 stars. I didn’t like it, but I have no doubt that it will entertain fans of the first, who crave even more violence, depravity, and completely ridiculous action. The final scene, I will admit, is pretty insane (I won’t give it away, but it involves a shark), and will entertain action junkies and action newbies alike. This movie doesn’t try very hard, but sometimes it doesn’t have to. Its basic concept is fun, and it’s one of the most purely entertaining movies this summer. Being a nitpicking fuck, I refuse to grade it leniently, but it will definitely entertain those of you who don’t pause movies to look for continuity errors.
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