Writer-director Jeff Wadlow, taking the reins from Matthew Vaughn, delivers a funnier and more focused “Kick-Ass 2” (2013). It’s formulaic, but that makes it better than the flailing 2010 original, the primary value of which is to introduce us to purple-haired Mindy/Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and green-suited Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
Tighter and funnier
The sequel is tighter and funnier, has better action sequences and adds a lot of colorful heroes and villains. The best thread – no surprise – belongs to Hit-Girl, who is out of her element when reduced to being ninth-grader Mindy. As with Superman, her real identity is being a superhero; her fake identity is being a normal kid.
When Mindy’s supposed new friends turn out to be a bunch of mean girls, I was looking forward to the revenge scenes more so than in Moretz’s “Carrie” remake (also from 2013). “Kick-Ass 2” resurrects the “sick stick” from “Minority Report,” and this one makes people vomit and have diarrhea. It’s as entertaining as advertised.
“Kick-Ass 2” (2013)
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Writers: Jeff Wadlow, Mark Millar, John Romita Jr.
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
The film does the usual second-movie thing where the superheroes set aside their powers before coming back for a grand finale. Wadlow somewhat resurrects the “real life” concerns when all costumed people are arrested by the police, who can’t tell the heroes from the villains.
Wadlow – and by extension Kick-Ass himself — has enough self-awareness to ask whether Dave made the world better or worse by becoming Kick-Ass. An objective case could be made that the introduction of Kick-Ass into the city’s crime scene escalated the conflict and violence.
But while “Kick-Ass 2” is more thematically pointed than the original, it’s not particularly deep. The stakes are high – this time for the title character more so than Hit-Girl. And Dave’s dad (“Roswell’s” Garrett M. Brown) plays a bigger role this time. But the ultimate point is to have fun and to laugh.
Good gags
The “sick stick” is the broadest gag, but a solid second place goes to a sequence where Dave begs Mindy in the school halls to continue training him. Observers assume Dave’s noticeably younger girlfriend is breaking up with him.
But the movie is packed with quick little bites of humor: Mindy filling up the swear jar; Marty/Battle Guy (Clark Duke) showing up at a superhero meeting with a fake origin story, not realizing his friend is Kick-Ass; and all of the superhero and supervillain names, spoken casually by everyone.
Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has reinvented himself as The Motherfucker, a supervillain. Kick-Ass strikes up a relationship with the scantily clad Night Bitch (Lindy Booth). The best name Dave’s friend Todd (Augustus Prew) can come up with is Ass Kicker, and his costume is simply the color inverse of Kick-Ass’s.
Carrey intriguingly off-brand
Jim Carrey, in an otherwise down decade, shows up with an intriguingly off-brand performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes, a veteran (in both senses of the word) superhero. The actor has a mouthpiece that makes him sound different, and he tamps down the Carrey-isms enough to make a wholly new character, not a variation on the Jim Carrey Character.
The highway chase scene isn’t quite at the level of “The Matrix Reloaded” or “Bad Boys II,” but it’s an impressive mix of tension, humor and violence. As a villain sprays a van ceiling with machine-gun bullets, Hit-Girl rolls around to avoid them all.
Among hand-to-hand fights, Hit-Girl versus Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina) is a highlight, this saga’s size-differential equivalent of Yoda versus Count Dooku. “Kick-Ass 2” is one of those films where fights are constructed via camera cuts as much as on-screen action (“Daredevil” was still a couple years away from bringing back in-frame choreography).
But that’s the only way to show a huge bodybuilder fighting a pixie, and the filmmakers do it well, capping the clash with a send-off line good enough that I forgive Hit-Girl’s sudden ability to speak Russian.
With this sequel, the “Kick-Ass” films still don’t rise to the level of sharp commentary about superhero-ing or anything else. But this time around, the absurdities and exploits are a lot more fun to watch.