There's a great novelty about Kick-Ass. It's about a teenager who decides he's had enough of his boring high school life and takes to the city to fight crime. The problem, though, is that he hasn't been bitten by a radioactive spider, wasn't born with mutant genes, or didn't crash-land on Earth from an alien planet. He doesn't have superpowers. Hell, he doesn't even have powers. He's just an ordinary kid. And because he's just an ordinary kid, Kick-Ass gets his Ass-Kicked. The only thing that saves him is his eventual team-up with a better trained ten-year old heroine named Hit-Girl. Together, they do pretty damned well.
Fast forward a few years and now we have Kick-Ass 2. The actions of our heroes from the first film have inspired several changes. While ordinary citizens are donning costumes and taking to the streets as vigilantes like Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl did to fight crime, we now have a new villain, The Mother F@#$er, intent on hunting down Kick-Ass to get revenge for what he did in the climactic finale during the original movie. Kick-Ass, still interested in fighting street crime, joins a team of "good guys". The MFer, wanting his revenge, pays off a team of assassins to hunt him down... a team of "bad guys". Two posses. Sharks and Jets, I guess. But wait a minute - what about Hit-Girl, scene stealer of the first movie? She's hanging up the cape and struggling with her own problems in high school...
Noooooo! Really? But it's Hit-Girl! You can't do that to Hit-Girl!
I suppose that was inevitable. If you're making sequels and keeping the same cast, the one thing you can't fight is the aging process. The charm of Hit-Girl is that she's not just the sidekick. She might be younger than Kick-Ass, but she's the hero doing the real damage - bouncing off walls, jumping off roofs, smashing through windows. She's been trained and she's not nearly as vulnerable as our other heroes. But she's still a little kid! That's the fun of it!
Again, can't fight it. Chloe Moretz is a few years older now and the story needs to be adjusted to fit on-screen. Now, it probably seems like I'm complaining... "recast Hit-Girl!" or "leave Hit-Girl out of the sequel!" Actually, I'm saying just the opposite. Chloe is such a scene stealer as Hit-Girl... If you're going to adjust the script to accommodate an older Hit-Girl, then you could have left Kick-Ass out of this movie and made this her film.
While I thought the movie was okay, it felt like I was watching two stories - 1) what happens when Kick-Ass joins a team and 2) what happens when Hit-Girl adjusts to older life. While it sounds like #2 would be the obviously boring choice, it wasn't. I actually enjoyed her struggle. I thought it was Hit-Girl meets the movie Mean Girls. If they had expanded that and framed her as The MFer's target (easily done), then I think it would've made a really good movie.
So what about Kick-Ass and his adventures with the new team? Good, but kind of boring. The new director, Jeff Wadlow, did a few things well enough. If you saw the original, directed by Matthew Vaughn, then you expected the vulgarity and the over-the-top action scenes... lots of blood and ridiculousness. But was it engrossing? No. And I just didn't really care about Kick-Ass! Honestly, I was much more interested this time in the secondary characters and even The MFer as the villain than I was the hero of the movie. Jim Carrey nailed it as Colonel Stars and Stripes and didn't get as much play time as I would have liked. Neither did the rest of the team - Night Bitch, Dr. Gravity, Insect Man. I know that if you develop these kinds of characters, then you risk the movie being three hours long... but what does it say if I'm more invested in them than Kick-Ass? It ain't good.
My other complaint is that I was hoping the movie would be a little bit more "comic book-y". Can we make that a word, please? I'm not talking to the extent of Scott Pilgrim, but more than just a few "Meanwhile..." ink bubbles. Obviously, the movie doesn't take itself very seriously, so why not play that up? I thought the best combination of comic action was the fight between Hit-Girl and Mother Russia. To those who aren't fans of the slow motion camera direction, you won't be impressed, but it definitely beat Wadlow's shaky cam fights used earlier in the movie. I thought the Hit-Girl / Mother Russia throw-down was the best-of-the-best. Definitely left me wanting more.
Although I was late watching this flick, I heard a lot of fans clamoring for another sequel after this was released. I have no idea what you're smoking. It's not that I'm screaming against it, but ... again, the novelty is gone. Our heroes are aging, they aren't as much fun, it rubs across the grain of the graphic novels. I'll certainly admit that they left the movie open for another sequel (wasn't hard to do), but it didn't make a ton of money either. The studio isn't going to jump at the chance.
It must seem like I'm crapping all over it. I'm not. It was okay and even rewatchable. I think my expectations were too high... I really enjoyed the first film (and love the comic). When I'm watching the movie, though, and have to hold back from skipping scenes until Hit-Girl or Colonel Stars and Stripes is the main attraction again, then I know I'm forcing myself to like it. That's no good.
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