Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Brilliant and touching

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This film picks up a few years later. Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson )joins a Justice League of misfit crime fighters. Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) has promised to stop crime fighting as she stuffs dollar bills into the swear jar. Our bad guy (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has taken on a name not worth repeating. He has started his own league of criminals.The film is let down. Kick-Ass has taken on the looks and persona of Harold Ramis. The film is filled with awkward swearing, i.e. lines read by people who don't know how to swear. The Justice League of misfits should have been a solid spoof, but instead was written rather lame.The film had potential. It opened with a re-do of my favorite scene from the first film, but since I have seen that film, the element of surprise was missing, making the scene a bust. Hit Girl as Mindy suffers from teen angst as she fails to fit in with the kids in high school.The plot was bad, characters were shallow, and the humor was a yawn. Yet there are aspects of enjoyment to be found in the film.This is aimed at the young adult audience who have to lie about their age to see it.Parental Guide: F-bombs, nudity.

Kick ass 2 was super close to be as good as the first but was not

Kick-Ass was a movie that both entertained and shocked audiences with its rebellious patent of taking the superhero genre and spinning into a raunchy hard-R satire with its unapolegetic delivery of ultra violence and subversive humor. It answered the witty question of why no one in real life every tried to be a superhero. Whether it or not it offended you with its morally reprehensible material (particularly from the violent and foul-mouthed Hit-Girl), it made for a wildly bold transcendence of its genre thanks to director Matthew Vaughn behind the wheel. It is sad to say that Vaughn didn't make his return to the director's chair for this sequel and is instead replaced by Jeff Wadlow whose previous effort was 'Never Back Down'. Upon watching this follow-up to the original, it seems like Wadlow may not have been the best replacement. Lacking the ironic flair and falling short of the anarchic comedic spirit that made the first film wildly entertaining, this film stands as a disappointing continuation of its predecessor. Set roughly three years after the events of the first film, Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has left his life as the crime-fighting machine in favor of picking up on his high school life. That is not the same for Mindy MacCready (played by Chloe-Grace Moretz), now 15, who is still out in the streets suited up as Hit- Girl taking down the baddies. After getting caught sneaking out by her now-guardian Marcus (played by Morris Chestnut), she is forced to give up her life of crime-fighting and go to school as a normal teenage girl. Meanwhile, Dave decides to jump back into his superhero alter- ego and recruits a band of others superhero wannabes lead by Colonel Stars-and-Stripes (played by Jim Carrey). This leads them into a battle against the former Red Mist star Chris D'Amico (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who adopts a new super villain alter-ego known as The Mother F@%#er, in attempt to seek revenge against Kick- Ass who killed his father in the last film. Matthew Vaughn brought a clever source of audacious meta-humor and an unyielding push for stylized violence and profane dialogue for the purpose of establishing a unique portrayal of the comic book genre to the original. That is what made the film vastly entertaining. Jeff Wadlow tries following his footsteps, but his attempt comes to subpar results. Whereas the violence and profane were wittily perpetrated to establish a slick comedic edge, Wadlow cuts slightly back on the edgy humor in favor of toothless sex jokes and attempts at bodily humor that almost never seem to land. And when it comes down to taking the character and setting them in the crime-fighting action, the results are less funny and fall inconsistent with some jarring tonal shifts and stabs at dark humor that occasionally get off-putting. While the action sequences following Kick-Ass and his buddies are fun and retain roughly the same amount of bloodshed displayed in the original, less time is spent with the last film's show-stealer Hit-Girl whose time on screen is reduced in favor of segments focusing on Mindy Macready exploring her life as a high school girl joining a clique of snobby school chicks, a subplot that not only feels overly derivative from 'Mean Girls', but hinders the pacing of the plot . Thus, the majority of the show is handed to Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kick-Ass who, while likable, lacks the level of charisma to Chloe Grace Moretz's Hit- Girl; while a large portion to handed to Christopher Mintz-Plasse's supervillain ego whose evil demeanor feels often too vicious and over-the-top to even contribute to the darkly funny atmosphere. Jim Carrey's Colonel Star-and-Stripes, a role the actor now detests due to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting months prior, is no show stealer here; though shines with a little twinkle of charm. In the end, it is fair to say Jeff Wadlow succeeds at making the film self-aware of itself while breathing a few nice action scenes to engage in the adrenaline- fueled testosterone, even if his style of humor falls short of Matthew Vaughn's comedic beauty. Kick-Ass 2 is a moderately entertaining sequel that may boast a sense of excitement in terms of feeding audiences with its energetic action muscle, but falls shallow to the bold humor and subversiveness that ravaged the beauty of its predecessor. It comes to show that more often than not, it follow-up signals a step down from the franchise. But could the return of Matthew Vaughn helped? It is certain.

***spoilers*** I think that Kick-Ass 2 fell victim of the classic sequel syndrome that plagues the movie industry these days. In sequels they look to mix things up but still keep the fire from the first movie alive.In Kick-Ass 2 they had definitely kept the humorous and kick ass fighting scenes that made me love the first movie but after hit girl tries to fit in with the mean girls at high school, wets her pants over some one direction knock off, then goes on a date with some random jock that just met her just to dump her in the woods, and her only way of revenge hit girl the most bad ass superhero in the whole franchise gets revenge by dressing up all pretty pretty and makes them all vomit milk and spew pudding out their asses with her "sick stick".I'm just all sorts of disappointed from this sequels simply because they made half the movie about hit girl trying to quit doing what she does best. I did think there were some other draw backs to this sequel but they could have been completely disregarded if they could have just let hit girl be hit girl or at least just made her a small part of the movie because I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and I do think it is worth watching just don't go into this movie expecting too much out of it.