Whenever a film that ended up being really good underperforms at the box office, it's disappointing. In a world where you see bad movies that make millions of dollars and spawn unncesary sequel after unnecessary sequel, it's nice to see one of these underrated gems generate enough interest to warrant a sequel. A prime example of what I am talking about is 2010's Kick-Ass. The film, which followed a young high schooler named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who decided to become a costumed superhero after realizing no one else had done it before, made $96 million worldwide on a $30 million budget which, although isn't terrible, isn't entirely great either (in the US alone it made only $48 million, which means it underperformed).
But then something happened: Kick-Ass found a new life on DVD and Blu Ray, developing a strong cult following among fans. And so, three years later, we finally get a sequel: Kick Ass 2.
Dave a.k.a Kick-Ass (played once again by Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy MacCready a.k.a Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) are still policing the streets of New York as superheroes, fighting crime and keeping citizens safe. But when Hit Girl is ordered by her guardian to give up the superhero business and lead a normal life in high school, Dave is left on his own. He eventually finds a superhero team called Justice Forever, headed by ex mafia enforcer, born again Christian Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). But problems arise as Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) returns to take his revenger on Kick-Ass who *spoiler alert* killed his father with a bazooka in the last movie. He decides to become the world's first supervillain, taking the moniker "The Motherfucker" (swear I'm not making that name up), who recruits an army of villains in order to destroy Kick Ass.
I really enjoyed the first Kick Ass. It felt like a superhero film, but with a Tarantino-esque twist to it. It was also an excellent satire on the superhero genre itself, taking little tropes of the genre and turning them on its head (hell Nicolas Cage was a parody of Batman in that movie). So I was looking forward to the sequel because I wanted to see the continuation of this world and how they would expand on this world of costumed heroes, and because I was excited to see Jim Carrey in a dark action comedy like this, regardless of the recent comments he's made (more on that in a little bit).
After seeing the movie, I thought it was pretty damn good. It's a solid follow up to the original film and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
The entire cast gives some very strong performances here, particularly from the two big leads, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz. Taylor-Johnson gives more depth to the character of Dave/Kick Ass this time. His character has matured, taking responsibility for the actions of becoming the first civilian to don a superhero costume. He still shows some of the humor from the last movie, for sure but it's nice to see this added maturity to the role.
Moretz owns it as Hit Girl. She's still the same badass as she was in the last movie. What impressed me the most was the way her being in high school was handled. Usually, this type of story may seem predictable but here, it was handled really well. There seemed to be some echoes of Carrie White with the way the story was portrayed minus the psychic powers of course (which is ironic considering Moretz will be playing Carrie this October).
The rest of the supporting cast was excellent as well. Christopher Mintz-Plasse provides some nice comic relief as The Motherfucker (I swear that's gotta be one of the most....original names for a supervillain ever). He can be truly menacing as a villain, but it's humorous in a darkly comic sort of way. The rest of the supporting cast was fine as well (Donald Fasion where the hell have you been since Scrubs? Good to have you back).
But the big standout in this film was Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes. Carrey chews the scenery in every scene he's in and looks like he's having a ton of fun, regardless of what he has said. All right I might as well address the elephant in the room now: Carrey has said that he would not be a part of the film's publicity campaign because he does not support the amount of violence that was featured in the film. Now, do these comments take away from his performance in the film? Absolutely not because Carrey was one of the best parts in the film, stealing every scene that he's in. He was an absolute blast to watch.
The director of this film is Jeff Wadlow, whose big directing credit before this was the teen fighting movie Never Back Down......yeah he's never really tackled a film on this big of a scale before and in the beginning of the film, it definitely shows. However, as the film goes along, he starts to find his groove, but in the beginning it does take him a while to find it, especially with the action sequences.
And speaking of the action sequences, they are, for lack of a better word, absolutely kick ass (swear that will be the only time I use that word in this review). They are incredibly fun and entertaining to watch, although I will admit they do lack some of the cool visual flair that the action sequences had in the first movie. But they were pretty well done.
As for negatives, I mentioned it took Wadlow a while to find his groove,like some of the hand to hand combat sequences at first were a little bit on the shaky side. and that some of the action sequences didn't have the unique style the action sequences the original had. And the story....yes it's not as sharp and witty as I thought the first one was, but it's still an entertaining ride.
And that's all Kick Ass 2 needs to be. Kick Ass 2 was a fun, absolutely enjoyable film to watch and definitely a solid follow up to the original film. It's not been getting a lot of love at the box office (it opened at #4 this weekend) so please, go out and see it. It's definitely one sequel worth seeing
Grade: B+
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