Kick-Ass 2 (2013) Review

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

Kick-Ass 2 follows Dave Lezewski, who, tired of life as a normal teenager, dons the Kick-Ass persona once again and joins a team of amateur heroes, only to be faced with their biggest challenge yet in a team of ruthless super villains, led by The Motherfucker, who is out for blood. 

If you ever actually watched Kick-Ass 2, there’s a weird sense of imposters syndrome, where the characters and style are relatively the same, but the originality and heart are all but missing. Absent especially is Matthew Vaughn, whose visceral action and underdog saga of redemption made the original such a classic, and in his place is Jeff Wadlow, who makes an attempt at mimicking Vaughn’s style but on the heels of an incomprehensible story that comes off as a soft-core superhero flick, trading in that unhinged brutality and chaotic freedom for an emphasis on Mindy’s sexuality (which is borderline creepy, as Moretz was 15 fucking years old), throwing Chris D’Amico in a leather gimp suit (thus making him a massive joke, once again), and playing this off like a shitty B-movie of street level heroes and absurd supervillains, who sadly aren’t the slightest bit enjoyable. 

Like I said though, while the characters totally blow, it’s the story that suffers the most, spending most of its runtime trying convince Mindy and Dave that they aren’t and should never be superheroes, which was already pretty much covered in the first movie. Sure, their motivation is discovered through a bit of trademark tragedy but it’s nothing compared to the darkly uncompromising ending we should’ve gotten, and don’t even get me started on Dave and Mindy’s little romantic ending (who, thus far, had maintained a very sibling-style relationship). 

Kick-Ass’s sequel sports a pretty mixed cast as well, starring Morris Chestnut, John Leguizamo, Olga Kurkulina, Donald Faison, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke, Jim Carrey, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Oddly enough, it’s the brief performance from Carrey (who has since denounced this movie and his character) that stands out the most, in a film of downright rough characters. He, along with the obvious favorites in Moretz and Taylor-Johnson, seem to be the only thing keeping this being a total disaster, though just barely. 

Kick-Ass 2, directed by Jeff Wadlow, is a massive letdown compared to the originality and bleak violence of the original, ruining many of the main characters arcs and leaving us no better off than where we ended the first. A cash grab sequel at its finest (or worst really).

4.1/10