Kick Ass 2 (WARNING: Strong Language used)

In 2010, director Matthew Vaughn had brought the viewing audiences the comic book movie, "Kick-Ass." Based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar, the film told of a dorky high school geek, Dave Lizewski, who decides to become a superhero, Kick-Ass. He has no superpowers, but that doesn't stop him from getting into fights with crooks, who work under the kingpin of it all, Frank D'Amico. And he's not the only one, as a little girl and her father take on criminals as well, as Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Now the duo and Kick-Ass must join forces to take down the organization and bring peace to the city. For a film, based on a superhero parody, to be made in the middle of the superhero film craze, this film had so many things that made it stand out from the average superhero movie. It also made the careers of both Aaron Taylor Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz into more of the public, allowing them to appear more frequently. That, and Nicholas Cage was straight up awesome in the movie.

Today, we'll be discussing it's sequel. How was it? Well, let's find out...

In "Kick-Ass 2," more people have been inspired to dawn their own superhero persona and fight crime. Mindy (Hit Girl), now living with her father's friend, helps Dave train to get back into the superhero business after a while, as she is now trying to live a normal high school life. It's then Dave joins a group of superheroes, under the name "Justice Forever," as they start to go up against Frank D'Amico's son, Chris (formally Red Mist in the first movie, now The Motherfucker), who wants revenge on Kick-Ass for killing his father, by forming an army of super villains, known as the Toxic Megacunts. Like most sequels, this film tries to make itself bigger and have more things that the first film had, but doesn't have the exact charm that was given. The film feels the need to give shock value, as opposed to polishing things out.

For starters, the new heroes introduced that form Justice Forever aren't really developed as much as they could have been. We hear some of the back stories that are told, but when we hear the best friend's backstory to be a lie, it leaves us to think if the others were lies too. Not only that, but the love story between Dave and his crush in the first film is completely thrown out the window because of a misunderstanding, that could have easily been fixed; and to add insult to injury, the girlfriend admits that she was cheating on Dave the whole time. Now, the misunderstanding cliche has been done to death in film, but here there's no point to even have it. The whole point of this being here was only so the other member of Justice Forever, Night-Bitch, could have a romantic interest with Kick-Ass, which begs the question, what the hell was the point of having the girlfriend in the film to begin with? If you had just cut her part out of the film, nothing would have been taken away from this film. Plus, Night-Bitch and Kick-Ass's relationship is really underdeveloped, and there's hardly any chemistry between the two. If they didn't spend so much time with gross-out humor and Mindy dealing with the skank squad, we could have had more development among the characters.

Oh, that's another thing; the scenes with Mindy trying to have a school life and dealing with those """"popular"""" girls, I hated. I can understand it would make it funnier if the girls got what they deserved, but just how it's built up and executed doesn't really make it work. They do the same cliched "oh we pranked you good, you're new which means you suck" crap, and it was REALLY dull to watch. I mean, the so called "prank" they pull is just drive her out into the woods to a party that isn't there, come out of hiding with beer, leave...and that's it. They don't have her in the dark kissing an animal or anything like that...that's not a prank, that's just lying. And that payoff of Mindy getting her revenge on them was simply underwhelming and disgusting (both bad and gross).

The action scenes, while not bad, had way too much shaky cam that half of the time I could see what was going on. When are filmmakers going to learn that shaky cam doesn't make the scene more effective, it only makes it aggravating? It's about as useful as jump-scares in horror movies.

Now what WAS good about his movie? Well, the ones returning from the first film still do great, and the new people in are fairly good too. John Leguizamo as Chris's caretaker, and he manages to get in some of the more funnier lines in the movie. The members of the Toxic Megacunts were also great villains, especially Mother Russia, who straight up goes Jason Vorehees on almost anyone she comes in contact with. Her fight scene with Hit-Girl was also a big highlight of the film, and really added much excitement to the climax. Not to mention, the members of Justice Forever were also enjoyable to watch, despite the lack of development. However, the biggest highlight was Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes. He really pulled through with this performance, having a mix between his bat-shit insane attitude to his calm moral nature, which I can tell is an homage to his first comic-book performance, "The Mask." And it really bugs me that he didn't want to promote this film, because his argument makes no damn sense. For a guy going against a film with a lot of violence, let alone a sequel that was just as, you'd think he'd look over what the hell he was signing up for. And if his excuse is for the Sandy Hook shooting, then let me ask this Mr. Carrey: where were you when OTHER shootings have happened in the past? I'm not saying people don't have a right to view things, I just want some consistency here.

Overall, while "Kick-Ass 2" does have problems, it still manages to be an entertaining film. It's got good humor, the acting is still enjoyable, certain action scenes worked out decently (aside from the shaky cam), and I do hope they do a third film to end things out. However, I am hoping they try to make it less choppy.

Rating: 6/10