Review – Kick Ass 2

After the events of the first Kick Ass story, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) attempt to return to normal high school life. But they quickly grow bored and their hero personas, Kick Ass and Hit Girl, return. Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) recreates himself as supervillain The Mother Fucker, vowing to murder Kick Ass to avenge the death of his father. When Hit Girl has a change of heart, and returns to high school, Kick Ass reaches out to new allies and joins a team of cos-playing vigilantes, Justice Forever, led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). In response The Mother Fucker assembles a team, The Toxic Mega Cunts, and they start targeting the members of Justice Forever and their families, luring Kick Ass and Hit Girl into a violent showdown.

This is a worthy sequel to the original, which wisely focuses on character development rather than just upping the scales of spectacle. It’s a violent movie, but perhaps less so than it’s predecessor. With the excellent impression left by Moretz in the original, it was a given that she would feature more in the sequel. Her burgeoning sexuality, paired with grief for her late father, gives her depth and vulnerability unseen previously, and it’s played with aplomb by the talented star. But for much of the second act her storyline plays out like a badly written rip off of Mean Girls – teenage drama which might turn off the fans who are hungry for cos-playing ultraviolence. (Of which there is plenty, courtesy of writer-director Jeff Wadlow.) As in the last film, the narration can be a little tiresome, but the widening support cast add a lot of colour, and Mintz-Plasse’s ineffectual bumbling is still enjoyable.

The strength of this franchise has been in its ability to humorously depict costumed vigilantes in a more realistic setting, in contrast to mainstream comic book films which require a heavy dose of suspended disbelief. While this sequel worked, I can’t imagine them making too many more films in this series before all the cos-players are forced to actually grow up.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496UpltB8-8&w=400]