Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

When Kick-Ass came out back in 2010, it generated a lot of discussion. Some critics raved about it, others tore it apart for its moral reprehensibility, and in general it seemed to become a fascinating lightning rod. It also did well enough financially to justify a sequel, though in the three years since any sense of buzz around the franchise seems to have dissipated. People weren’t really clamoring for a Kick-Ass 2, and this weekend’s box office would seem to indicate that, but as always a good final product would justify the whole endeavor. Jeff Wadlow’s Kick-Ass 2 is not that final product. In fact, it is more inconsequential, misguided and tonally inconsistent than the original could ever dream of being. Often writers will criticize a film for “wanting to have it both ways.” Kick-Ass 2 is a movie that wants to have it five or six ways, and it accomplishes nothing.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson returns as Dave Lizewski, the Kick-Ass of the first film who has since hung up the suit and gone back for his senior year of high school. Meanwhile, entering high school is Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz), the Hit-Girl of the first film who has trouble assimilating to the new Mean Girls-esque culture. And then there's Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), previously known as Red Mist, who sits around his mansion most of the day plotting his revenge on Kick-Ass. He begins to assemble an evil army to take his nemesis down, while Kick-Ass suits up once more to join up with a team led by ex-mobster Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey).

It’s impossible to ever know really what Kick-Ass 2 is going for, since every moment seems to demand a different reaction from the audience. Ultimately, the only way it would ever work is if Wadlow makes every character onscreen as despicable as possible. Clearly that isn’t the intention, because many characters seem like nice, upstanding people. The film asks us to sympathize with their plight, but when horrific, brutal things happen to them Wadlow is sure to throw in a cheap joke. Kick-Ass 2 asks us to root for the protagonists, but also to laugh when they fail. That’s an uneasy mix, to say the least. Sometimes these tonal shifts happen within seconds, like when a “comical” attempted rape scene leads to a beating and then the slaughter of several police officers. Ha ha.

This scene where the officers are brutally killed also speaks to another of the film’s wild inconsistencies. The Kick-Ass films are ostensibly about what it’d be like if people tried to be superheroes in the real world. This isn’t a hidden agenda; these characters are more than happy to tell you about it in every other scene. Sometimes they put together a sequence that slightly resembles this, like when Stars and Stripes and his team take out a prostitution ring. Then this action scene with the police happens, and it’s exactly like the kind of thing you’d see in an over-the-top action movie. Very little about this movie feels like the real world, and this is seen not just in the action but also the way the characters interact with each other. Things happen in this movie that should leave a significant emotional impact on everyone involved, but Wadlow does not explore this. Within a couple seconds everyone is right back to normal. This is supposed to be a universe where actions have consequences, but you could have fooled me.

Several pieces of Kick-Ass 2 seem like they could add up to a good movie, but it’s kind of fascinating how the film wastes any potential it accidentally stumbles across. While Jim Carrey may have officially denounced the movie for its violence a while back, he clearly showed up to give a great performance here. He gets some fine enough moments in, but the film never gives him anything really exciting to do before it decides it's done with him. There’s no arc, emotional journey or climactic moment in his time onscreen. His character is just… there, and it’s really disappointing. Wadlow also finds a way to waste Hit-Girl, which is quite the feat. While her story might be interesting in broad strokes, it’s executed really poorly. Moretz is great, but her whole plot line is cripplingly predictable, and it’s so separate from everything else that it feels like the B story in an episode of television. It also leads up to one of the film’s lowest and most disgusting moments: a gross-out gag that exists only to get an empty reaction from the audience.

In fact, empty reactions are what Kick-Ass 2 lives for. It’s a movie that changes identities scene in and scene out, and that is the real reason it will seem repulsive to many. It doesn’t have the confidence to go all the way into cynical shock territory, but if it did that it would have at least been admirable. It spends long stretches of time doing nothing of note, and then when it does go for the hard-R gag is feels startling and unpleasant. I won’t deny that making a successful Kick-Ass film is a difficult proposition, but it’s not like Wadlow is the first guy to try and mix comedy and graphic violence. He just seems completely lost whenever he is tasked with weaving those two elements together.

Grade: D