Kick Ass 2
Sometimes a sequel can come out that can stop a potentially great franchise stone cold dead, not necessarily because it’s a BAD movie per se, but more because it’s failure resulted from not remembering the essential spirit that had made the original movie so great. That appears to be what happened here with this 2014 sequel to Kick Ass, a film that shocked a lot of people not just with its R rated language and violence in a comic book movie, but by keeping the balance with its absurd elements just right in order to make it an incredibly FUN movie to watch, gently mocking comic book nerds as it related the story of one such nerd who donned a cheap costume and became a crime fighting vigilante just because of how cool it was to do so. The film gained even more traction by reducing its powerless title character to the sidelines in order to showcase the real star in Hitgirl, a female adolescent ass kicker trained since birth by her father to take it to the bad guys by any means necessary up to and including killing combat. As played by Chloe Grace Moretz, the character displayed remarkable confidence and poise as she carved her way through a slew of bad guys before helping to take out the city’s top crime boss as a finale. Flash forward to the sequel 4 years later with Moretz now returning as a 15 year old high school freshman being raised by her late father’s best friend and old partner on the police force (Morris Chestnut) who is doing everything he can to steer her away from being a crimefighter which in turn leads to her sneaking out of school and heading to some kind of secret training center where she continues to prepare herself for battles ahead. Obviously, the entire film could focus on her and her insanely violent methods of fighting crime, but we also have to bring back the characters of Kick Ass himself (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as well as budding superhero turned vengeful supervillain Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) whose crime boss father had fallen at the hands of Kick Ass sloppily wielding a bazooka at the end of the first film. It goes without saying that much of the story here makes little sense unless one has seen and is familiar with Part 1, but as Red Mist (already looking different at the beginning of the movie now sporting a goatee) morphs his personality into that of his new supervillain identity which he actually calls The Motherfucker, the film manages to slip in John Leguizamo as his mob bodyguard (and de facto legal guardian) who nearly walks away with the movie early and often with a sly, understated performance, knowing full well that this rich mafia kid is out of his mind even considering going in this direction in life but yet still playing along reluctantly with frequently hilarious results (at one point Leguizamo is referred to as being like Alfred to Mintz-Plasse’s evil Bruce Wayne and that description is pretty apt). Unfortunately, this whole entire plotline is woefully underdeveloped except for the concept of having The Motherfucker bring in paid mercenaries who take on their own supervillain identities for themselves as they plot to kill Kick Ass for revenge and terrorize the city. Meanwhile, the film goes the near unforgivable route for Hitgirl, having her promise her guardian that she is going to “retire” from being a crimefighting superhero and try to live a normal life which leads to her hanging out with a group of high school “mean girls” in order to join their clique and other rather routine bits. Meanwhile Kick Ass (who had gotten some extra training from Hit Girl) has just decided to continue being Kick Ass which causes some friction between he and his dad but also (since he’s famous for his actions in the first film) leads to him being invited by some other amateur superheroes to join their little low rent Avengers type team looking to make a splash. Turns out that most of them are little more than sad sacks with depressing sob stories that led to them doing this but the real story here is with their leader, an ex mob enforcer turned camouflaged badass named Col. Stars And Stripes played by none other than Jim Carrey. And then this is where things got weird. Carrey (who actually has less than 8 minutes of screentime even though his role seems a lot more prominent) definitely succeeded in burying himself so deeply in this character that it comes off as being completely different than anything else that he has ever done in his entire career (and that even includes his speaking voice) but shortly after filming ended, he seemed to have an epiphany when it came to violence in movies and refused to promote the movie at all, even going so far as to say that he regretted making it, a controversial decision that was often used as the reason for the film’s box office failure (whereas Moretz would state that the film’s failure was due to an abundance of pirated copies being circulated everywhere) but to say that the performance itself by Carrey wasn’t effective is just not possible. Stars And Stripes is portrayed as being a vigilante superhero who is a born again Christian, chastises the other team members for swearing and / or taking the Lord’s name in vain, carries an unloaded gun for the purposes of intimidation without the intention of using it, compels the other superhero team members to engage in community service including feeding the homeless and keeps as his own personal sidekick a dog who wears a stars and stripes mask. Definitely a character whom it seems that we barely get a glimpse of and (with his tortured soul ex mob enforcer backstory) somebody whom just like Hitgirl could probably have done well to have had an entire movie devoted to him if Carrey hadn’t decided to trash the whole enterprise instead on his own way to a mental spiral that included him even talking about starting his own religion in a sadly unironic way. So as we sit there waiting on all these plotlines to converge (we already know that Hitgirl is gonna be coming out of “retirement” but unfortunately we have to wait through the entire movie before it actually happens), we come to realize the major advantage that Part 1 holds over this sequel and that was in the idea that once people realized that costumed superheroes were becoming a reality in “our” world, the wave of excitement that swept over society was a palpable thing which the first film successfully conveyed to us as viewers whereas here the sight of obvious social misfits making up the majority of these so called superheroes (and that includes Red Mist / Motherfucker) along with the sidelining of Hitgirl (widely seen as the only “real” badass superhero of the bunch) for the majority of the story only emphasizes the ironic message of the film which is the futility of doing such things because the only real good that can be accomplished from it is fleeting and temporary. This raising of the “maturity level” for the story is in stark contrast to the original concept that saw these people put on their costumes and go from childish stupidity to literally bringing down one of the nastiest crime bosses imaginable and in so doing sending a message to other criminals who cross the line (which is not much different than the way Batman does his business). But aside from the big name newcomers to the series such as Carrey and Leguizamo (both of whom do a good job here but wind up being underused) and the few scenes where Hitgirl does her thing just like we remember from Part 1 (and Moretz continues to show the amazing charisma at a young age that insures her of having a storied career in the future), this mostly comes off as being a disappointment except for a handful of funny moments (like when Motherfucker intends to rape a captured female member of Carrey’s team only to have some trouble getting it up and makes such a fool of himself that she actually laughs at him) and a heavily built up showdown between Hitgirl and a musclebound female Russian mercenary who has been dubbed Mother Russia not to mention the expected big showdown between Kick Ass and Motherfucker with all of the revenge marbles at stake. While the film does score points for having solid character development for its returning stars, it loses plenty as well for not quite having the same sense of fun that the original did, a bad idea for an ultra violent, R rated comic book movie which is full of ridiculous characters to begin with…
5/10