Kick-Ass 2

"Try to have fun. Otherwise, what's the point?"

                                                 You came to the wrong porno, friend

DIRECTOR: Jeff Wadlow

CAST: Aaron Taylor-Johnson's roid-rage, future Carrie, emo McLovin, Ace Ventura, Hot Tub Time Machine guy, a different guardian, racial "archetypes", Sid the Sloth, Turk with a lisp, the dude from the best episode of Black Mirror, a different Todd :(, Ser Jorah Mormont, Chuck Liddell, and Union fucking J...

PLOT: In the sequel to the psychotically fun Kick-Ass, the titular DIY superhero attempts to get to grips with life as a crimefighter, whilst Hit-Girl attempts to get to grips with life as a regular girl in high school. Meanwhile, Christopher Mintz-Plasse vows to get rid of all of the superheroes as his alter-ego - The Motherfucker.

When news broke that Matthew Vaughn wouldn't be directing the sequel to one of my all-time favourite films, I wept. Not literally of course - I'd already done my fair share due to the demise of Big Daddy. It seems to be a trend with the brilliant director. He makes a cracking film and then ditches the resulting franchise to start another. The X-Men franchise is comfortably in the safe hands of the proven Bryan Singer, but would the future of Kick-Ass lie in promising hands? 

Well, we were given a lifeline as Vaughn was allowed to choose his own writer/director for the project. 'Brilliant!' we were all thinking, 'surely he'd pick a terrific director - someone who he holds in high regard!' You can imagine our frustration when he chose the man whose last film before Kick-Ass 2 was Never Back Down - Jeff Wadlow.

Never fucking Back Down. 

It was important not to be too hasty, though - let's not be prejudice. Never Back Down may have had as many layers as a two-dimensional shape, but when it came to people punching each other, it was well-crafted and confident action filmmaking. Perhaps with a decent screenwriter, he could create something that could live up to Matthew Vaughn's deluded masterpiece. 

Jeff Wadlow was also named as screenwriter... shit.

And that's unfortunately where Kick-Ass 2 often falls flat. It's still got some fantastic one-liners and wickedly offensive humour - it's not often that you get to hear the word 'cunt' in Russian. But it's all of the talking in between the insults and the ass kicking that is tiresome; the exposition is flat and laboured, often repeating itself with many of the messages recited to us in Kick-Ass' first outing, and the use of voiceover even manages to outdo the predecessor when it comes to laziness. 

This runs parallel with a plot that is thin and uneven, the pacing miles off the snappy first film that managed to hit all of the right notes. This outing frequently manages to merge too many scenes into one mess, not helped by its convolution with too many characters (something that can be forgiven in the source material) and two stories that are competing for screen-time and quality - Kick-Ass' life as a superhero, Hit-Girl's life as a teenage-girl in high school.

It's definitely the latter that wins us over. This is very much Hit-Girl's show and Chloe Grace Moretz continues to take cinema by storm, often giving acting lessons to much older, more experienced actors. She's endearing and electrifying as everyone's sweary little girl, but now she's growing up she is burdened by the ever-lasting interest of bullies and being attracted to the opposite sex in high school. You're constantly egging her on to kick the shit out of everyone who crosses her in the corridors, but due to conflicting promises and needs, it doesn't come that easily to her, making her the person that we care about. She composes the emotional beats despite the fact that the film never hits the emotional heights as the first Kick-Ass which Nicolas Cage's Adam West spoof gets "owned".

The cinematography is too bright, sugar-coated and fake; looking as if it could expose its green screen behind the foreground action to reveal that the New York backdrops are, shock-horror Mr. Carrey, fake! This is probably due to the surprisingly low-budget ($2 million below the first Kick-Ass), considering the first was a successful hit. It could be argued that it's attempting to go for a comic book style, but why fix something that isn't broken? The first Kick-Ass nailed the colours, the look, the feel. This overboard fakeness highlights the two-dimensional story - deaths aren't fully felt, they're merely shrugged off as inconveniences by the time that the next scene has come around; there isn't enough repercussions when something doesn't go our heroes' way (Kick-Ass' girlfriend is conveniently dismissed earlier on, and despite how hot she is he couldn't give a shit!); and there are plot holes, such as David Lizewski (Kick-Ass) and Mindy Macready (Hit-Girl) discussing the importance of keeping their superheroic identities secret... whilst sat in the back of a taxi. 

                                       Jim Carrey being violent, whether he wants to or not 

But if you're watching this for masterful storytelling and award-winning cinematography, then you're certainly doing it wrong. The sooner you realise the quality of this piece of filmmaking isn't going to better what Matthew Vaughn can create, and you begin to relax, the better. Because I seriously doubt that anyone involved in Kick-Ass 2 gives a fuck. They don't care - the filmmaking might be well-below par, but it's almost as fun as the 2010 hit.

At a glance that still might not appear complimentary, but when you consider how much mind-blowing awesomeness and fun came with the first Kick-Ass, almost hitting the same level is still a reasonable achievement for Wadlow and company. The action is wild, over-the-top and full of gore. Despite no scenes living up to scenes from the first film, such as Hit-Girl destroying everyone via night-vision, or destroying everyone to the tune of Bad Education, it's still some of the best action and the most mental experiences you could ask for in a cinema this year.

However, despite all of the enjoyability from Aaron Taylor-Johnson's likability, Chloe Grace Moretz's charisma and Christopher Mintz-Plasse's magnificently named, gimpish supervillainy, there are some aspects that this film cannot mask. The addition of Jim Carrey's Colonel Stars and Stripes, replacing Nicolas Cage's Big Daddy as the father figure to our inexperienced heroes, is short-lived and criminally underused. He never poses the same threat or intrigue as Nicolas Cage managed in the predecessor.

And certainly worst of all, is the music. It's not bad, by any means. It's just generic at times, and lacking the quality of the soundtrack we were treated to by Vaughn. There's no Elvis, no Prodigy, no Joan Jett. We instead get Union J. It may have been used as a slightly amusing narrative tool, but that doesn't really give anyone the excuse to assault our ears with Union J. The audience's adrenaline will never rise to the glitzy heights of Kick-Ass fighting thugs with Omen blazing in the background.

However, despite all of the bad aspects, you will be sat there with a semi-insanical grin on your face as you watch the wackiness unfold. It's still got bags of energy and enthusiasm which will transfer itself to the audiences. Just try not to compare it to Kick-Ass too much, else the negatives will seem greater and you'll instead be wishing to watch the predecessor throughout the duration (as soon as I got home, I whacked it on). With talks of a third now that the comic books are being released, it's difficult to see where this franchise will go. A spin-off for Hit-Girl, by far the best character, would be the best option. Whatever happens, I'll be looking forward to it, but with a slight anxiety.   

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