Remember what movie was pretty good? Kick-Ass. It was far from perfect, but it came out at a great time where it was a welcome change from some of the other superhero movies that we’d been seeing recently. Fun, colorful, violent, and Hit-Girl was amazing. When the trailer came out for Kick-Ass 2, I was somewhat excited, but then I watched that trailer and it looked like dogshit. Not literal dogshit, mind you, as this trailer was really bright and colorful. Well, maybe YOUR dog’s shit is bright and colorful but…wait, I’m getting off topic here. The trailer for this film just felt a lot like, “Hey guys, remember that movie?! That movie was cool, right?! WELL HERE’S SOME MORE STUFF LIKE IT! (joke about dog balls)” Seriously? The tag on the trailer is Jim Carrey making a dog bite someone’s dick, and then if that wasn’t enough, have him deliver the line, “YA GOT A DOG ON YOUR BALLS!”? Yikes. Even though I thought that was a terrible thing, audiences seemed to love that line, so I did my best to withhold my personal disappointment with that trailer long enough to watch Kick-Ass 2…..only to end up feeling the exact same way about the whole movie.
Even if Jim Carrey had a relatively small role, he did get to hang out with a dog. That’s cool.
Now that Kick-Ass has become a public figure, there are lots of superheroes following in his footsteps. Good for the city, not so good for Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who has hung up his Kick-Ass boots after realizing how dangerous it is. That lasts for the first act of the film before Dave bumps into Mindy (Chloë Grace Moretz) who has only taken her Hit-Girl training even farther. While Mindy teaches Dave as much stuff as her late father has taught her, Dave’s old best friend Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) decides he’s going to go after Kick-Ass and become the world’s first supervillain under his new image of, wait for it, The Mother Fucker. Since The Mother Fucker is just a spoiled rich kid, he has to pay actual criminals to do the dirty work for him, which is when he decides to form the villainous group of, ugh…The Toxic Mega-Cunts. Yeah, exactly. Kick-Ass also joins a team of heroes, known as Justice Forever, which is led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Carrey), who is a former mafia hit man turned born again Christian. For every good deed done by Justice Forever, there’s a horrible deed done by The Toxic Mega-Cunts that results in the two teams having a showdown. One team wins, the other loses, and I feel like the biggest loser for thinking maybe this movie could’ve been fun.
And it’s funny because The Mother Fucker got his outfit from his dead mom’s bondage gear! LOL! Isn’t that WILD!?
Don’t get me wrong, I like fun just as much as the next guy. I understand that with a movie based on a superhero who calls himself “Kick-Ass” isn’t going to take itself too seriously, I just kind of hoped they would take their audience seriously. There will be some movie fans who will be happy to completely accept this film at face value, as they will be getting exactly what they expected. Three years ago, I got what I wanted out of the original movie, I had just hoped this wasn’t going to be The Hangover 2 of superhero movies. There was really nothing new or interesting brought to the table for this movie, other than some of the themes of Mindy trying to transition into being a regular girl instead of Hit-Girl. The only issue with that is that she wasn’t changing because she wanted to, she was changing because her foster father wanted her to. There were some interesting elements of personal identity in there, but it all came crashing down in a pile of shit and puke. It’s hard to say that Jim Carrey was bad in the movie, so much as his character wasn’t all that interesting and it seems like he got cast just for the sake of having the name “Jim Carrey” on the movie poster. There was a lot of wasted potential with the cast and characters, and director Jeff Wadlow, who took over for Matthew Vaughn, force-fed you reminders of comic books as much as he could. These subtle elements were present in the first film, but when you are having characters translated into Comic Sans word bubbles and arbitrarily throwing in a Stan Lee reference, the whole thing felt a little too heavy handed. I don’t know guys, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this movie was awesome and I was just being a cranky old guy but I can assure you that if you liked the trailer, you’ll definitely like this movie. Then again, it involves admitting how funny you think it is to hear a grown up say “balls” even after seeing a dog bite some balls. Good job, guys! We’re all grown ups!
Wolfman Moon Scale
The Wolfman Cometh 
Ohh I was going to see it and review it, now I am scared to do either.
Nice review.