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65%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #660
...out of 20,698 movies
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Following Kick-Ass' heroics, other citizens are inspired to become masked crusaders. But Red Mist leads his own group of evil supervillains to get revenge, kill Kick-Ass and destroy everything he stands for.
--IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: January 20, 2016
Kick Ass was a fun little fusion of black humor and ultra-violence, but nothing amazing. Still, it was good enough that I didn't have any worries going back for a second helping.
While Dave Liszewski has hung up his scuba suit, the effects of his stint as the masked Kick Ass are still running strong, and dozens of normal citizens have donned masks and taken to the streets. Among them is young Mindy McCready. While her adoptive father, police officer Marcus, has forbidden her from continuing her own masked vigilante activities as the deadly Hit Girl, she just can't adjust to normal life and skips school every day to fight crime. Likewise driven mad with his monotonous routine, Dave convinces Mindy to let him join her, redonning the green and yellow. Their partnership is short lived, however, as Marcus catches the girl in the act, and in a heartfelt conversation convinces her to give up Hit Girl for good. Dave's not happy about it, but he's committed to the cause and joins a group of superheroes run by Colonel Stars and Stripes called Justice Forever. Just in time, as the recently orphaned Chris D'Amico has sworn revenge on Kick Ass. Renaming himself The Motherfucker, he's put together his own band of violent super-villains, the Toxic Mega-Cunts.
While Kick Ass 2 is certainly a comedy, it's much less pronounced than the first movie. This go-around, they've stopped trying so hard to be funny and just let the humor happen. For example, Hit Girls' profanity was a hammy joke last time, based on her age. Problem is, it's a joke that's really only funny once, and you lose it on repeat viewings. Now, the girl will drop a four letter word here and there, but it's just dialogue. The jokes here are more along the lines of Motherfucker creating his costume from his mother's S&M garb, or the unabashed racism in naming his minions. It's still a little bit of novelty sure, but the movie isn't depending on it. The end result is a movie that's leagues more enjoyable the second time around. With that said, I wasn't too happy that they felt the need to resort to a bit of toilet humor, but thankfully it was only a couple of scenes.
With the comedy toned down, the action is a bigger part of the mix, and it delivers. Using the same stylistic uber-violence as the last one, I had a ball watching our merry group of heroes beat the shit out of various villains, and it paradoxically both matched and contrasted with the Motherfucker's schemes. You see, it's incredibly bloody sure, but when you ramp the violence up that far it takes on a bit of a cartoonish tone, and that's before you factor in everyone's ridiculous costumes. Make no mistake though, this is an incredibly dark movie, and Chris's quest for vengeance has reduced him to a deranged sociopath. For the most part, the depravity of his group is played deadly straight, and comes with a legitimate impact. Sure, there's a few exceptions where they tried to counter it with brevity, but the black humor found in his rape attempt being thwarted because he couldn't get it up doesn't take away from the fact that he had full intentions of raping this girl. Much like the comedy aspect, I found this dichotomy much less novel than the first movie's, which not only gave it its own feet to stand on, but a much stronger standing on repeat viewings.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz are both back and better than ever. Not only were they able to recreate the chemistry they had in the last movie, but they were both able to show their characters' growth while keeping them who they are. Like I said, Mindy is still defiant and willful, but she's also a fifteen year old girl going though a massive change of home life, to say nothing of the usual changes fifteen-year-olds have to deal with. Likewise, Dave is and always will be a nerd at heart, but he's much more confident now. Kudos to both of them for nailing these subtle changes in a movie where subtlety is not exactly the word of the day. Speaking of which, Christopher Mintz-Plasse set his ham level to eleven for this movie, and I absolutely love him for it. In my opinion, he's every bit as important a part of this franchise as the other two. Finally, I actually really liked Jim Carrey here, which is not a sentence I get to type that often. He's still over-acting sure, but not in his usual Ace Ventura way. The character fits the tone of the movie perfectly. He's publicly renounced his support for the film following the Sandy Hook tragedy, but I hope he takes a page from his performance here in future projects.
For my money, Kick Ass 2 edges out its predecessor, but just barely. The bigger focus on the action here is enough to pop this in much more often than the first one. 8/10.
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#1:
BuryMeAlive
- added January 20, 2016 at 4:37pm
You must be the only one in the world that likes
the second one over the first.
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#2:
George Snow
- added January 20, 2016 at 10:47pm
I like them both equally. Though I was surprised
that Moretz's role wasn't much bigger in this one.
She was the stand-out in the first.
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