In 2010, Kick-Ass was a breath of fresh air amidst the superhero movie boom that was already in full swing. Darkly funny and wildly violent, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Mark Millar’s graphic novel was an irreverent hit. Three years on, that film still holds up but with new writer/director Jeff Wadlow at the helm, the prospects of Kick-Ass 2 living up to its predecessor looked dicey.
Anyone familiar with Wadlow’s previous work, including mixed-martial arts drama Never Back Down and teen horror Cry_Wolf, will have had their doubts that he was the man to take the reigns from Matthew Vaughn and original screenwriter Jane Goldman. With a track record like that, it’s hardly a surprise that Kick-Ass 2 is his best work to date but he struggles to overcome the fact that we’ve seen this all before. Where Kick-Ass felt fresh and subversive at the time, Kick-Ass 2 doesn’t have the same shock value and the cast have all progressed away from the film to a point that they don’t quite fit as wannabe-superheroes the way they once did.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, for example, is now in the kind of shape you’d expect to see in a real superhero movie. He genuinely looks like he could kick someone’s ass, which makes it slightly unbelievable to see him still playing the same awkward teen he did in the last movie. And seeing a teenage Chloe Grace Moretz spouting F-bombs isn’t nearly as shocking as it was when she was 12.
Nonetheless, Taylor-Johnson and Moretz are back as Dave Lizewski aka Kick-Ass and Mindy Macready aka Hit Girl, respectively. Two years after the events of the first film, Dave has hung up his green wetsuit but is itching to get back to action after struggling with the boredom of every day life. Aware of the dangers of working alone, he finds a team of likeminded individuals called Justice Forever, led by former mob enforcer Colonel Stars & Stripes (Jim Carrey). He desperately wants Hit Girl to join the crew but she is on her way out of the crime-fighting biz, promising her new father Marcus (Morris Chestnut) that she’ll just be a regular teenage girl.
Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is still pissed about Kick-Ass killing his father and decides to rebrand himself The Motherfucker and become the first ever supervillain, recruiting a team of criminals as back up and taking to social media to brag about his exploits. He seems to throw it all together pretty quickly so what he’s been doing for the past two years is anyone’s guess.
It’s clear from there that the two super-groups are on course for a major battle at some point and Hit Girl will eventually come out of retirement to kill some goons. It’s fairly predictable stuff but is just about funny enough to remain interesting along the way. Curiously, despite the title, Kick-Ass’s storyline often takes a backseat and it’s Hit Girl’s arc that dominates the film. Off the streets and in high school, she’s tossed into a Mean Girls-esque plot that feels odd but generates some good laughs and is more interesting than the generic superhero plotline that Kick-Ass is stuck in.
While he handles the action well enough – it’s slick and glossy, if never really inventive – Wadlow’s biggest fault is his handling of tone and this film flies wildly from crude humour, sincere emotion and brutal action, sending out mixed message all over the place. For example, The Motherfucker’s big, chiselled Russian henchwoman Mother Russia slaughters numerous police officers, two by two, and the film plays it as a joke, yet when someone close to the good guys cops it, the film goes for cheap sentiment.
The returning cast do a good job with the material, with Moretz the obvious standout again. Unfortunately – but unsurprisingly given he met his maker last time out – there is no cameo from Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy here. Instead Jim Carrey somewhat fills that role in an excellent turn that’s sadly underused by Wadlow. There are also nice supporting roles for John Leguizamo as Motherfucker’s right-hand man and Donald Faison as would-be superhero Dr. Gravity.
Ultimately, Kick-Ass 2 is hardly a vintage effort, struggling to match the style and subversive verve that Matthew Vaughn brought to the original. Despite that, the film is generally compelling enough without ever really exploring some of the more interesting aspects that they touch on, such as vigilantism and the consequences of violence.
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