At its best, "Kick-Ass 2" is a semi-accurate portrayal of what would really happen if costumed vigilantes existed. At its worst...well, where do I begin? Matthew Vaughn's "Kick-Ass" (based on the comic book by Mark Millar) wasn't the strongest film, but at least it wasn't afraid to be excessively violent with a smile. It also contained some genuinely funny moments and even though I didn't love it, it wasn't entirely a waste of time. With Vaughn out and unimpressive director Jeff Wadlow in, "Kick-Ass 2" labors to reach the same level of gleeful bloodshed while maintaining charm.
Teenager Dave Lizeweski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has had some trouble adjusting to being a normal guy again. You see, Dave was the world's first superhero...sort of. He dressed up in a green wetsuit and fought crime under the moniker Kick-Ass. Mostly, Dave was the one getting his ass kicked. It wasn't until he met up with Mindy Macready aka Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) that he finally started to win some fights. Mindy kept on fighting bad guys after her father (Nicolas Cage, in photograph only) died, but Dave gave it up.
Dave was trailblazer, and soon dozens of costumed vigilantes were springing up all over New York. Itching to get back out there, Dave dons his unitard once again and joins a team of amateurs. The team is led by a born-again-Christian-former-mobster called Col. Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), whose partner is a German Shepherd that's been trained to bite men's genitals. Little does the team know, a supervillain by the name of The Motherf***er (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is building an army dead-set on vengeance against Kick-Ass.
Perhaps the biggest mistake "Kick-Ass 2" makes is its handling of Mindy Macready/Hit Girl. There's nothing wrong with what Wadlow wanted to do - make her give up fighting crime and try her hand at being an ordinary 15-year-old girl - but his execution is tactless. The scenes of Mindy stuck in a nightmarish version of "Mean Girls" are thuddingly unfunny, sloppily edited, and entirely juvenile. Chloe Grace Moretz does the best she can with the material, but is no longer allowed to be the profanity-spewing badass she was the first time around. What was originally the best character of the series has now been hamstrung and reduced to making people vomit and poop their pants. Seriously. That happens in the movie. Four times.
Dave isn't nearly as difficult to watch as he was in "Kick-Ass", when all he did was flail around and get beaten senseless. But still, there isn't much to him that's all that appealing. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has certainly gotten into better shape, but his performance is nothing special. When he's wearing the green mask, he doesn't do anything to bring out the character underneath. You could probably have stuck any actor into that wetsuit and achieved the same result.
"Kick-Ass 2" could have redeemed itself if it were at least a fun, stylish action flick, but it can't muster up much adrenaline. When Jim Carrey publicly denounced the film for its violence, he made it sound as though it was unforgivably merciless. In actuality, "Kick-Ass 2" is quite toothless. Bloody moments are covered quickly by fast edits or not shown at all. There are few "so violent it's funny" instances to be found, while everything else is just average. This is the worst kind of action: completely forgettable.
It's evident that this film is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek breakdown of superheroes. However, the dialogue is so witless and the jokes are so stale that "Kick-Ass 2" becomes a humorless exercise. Only someone with a severely low brow could laugh at some of the desperate attempts at humor, and only someone who's never seen another movie will find anything original about "Kick-Ass 2".
If you want to see a really good movie about a realistic costumed vigilante, watch James Gunn's "Super". It does everything that "Kick-Ass 2" wanted to do - be excessively violent, darkly funny, and surprisingly thoughtful - and does it much better. All "Kick-Ass 2" has is a one-note villain, an under-utilized Jim Carrey, and fecal humor.
