Film review: Kick-Ass 2

The sequel is action-packed and graphically violent, but cluttered with clumsy jokes and teen-movie clichés.

Chloë Grace Moretz as Hit Girl in a scene from Kick-Ass 2. Daniel Smith / AP / Universal Pictures
Powered by automated translation

Kick-Ass 2

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey

??

Simultaneously conceived as both a film and comic-book franchise, the original

Kick-Ass

movie from 2010 was no masterpiece, but it derived great comic energy from exploring the reality gap between its geeky teenage protagonists and their superhero fantasies.

This inferior sequel finds the Hollywood journeyman Jeff Wadlow replacing the original director Matthew Vaughn, ditching much of the first film’s ironic -humour and unhinged charm.

Following the death of her father, 15-year-old Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) has reluctantly retired her superhero alter ego Hit-Girl while she wrestles with normal adolescent issues such as boys, homework and the mean-girl clique at her school. Meanwhile, the nerdy New Yorker Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is still in the crime-fighting game as Kick-Ass, joining a motley team of costumed vigilantes led by the reformed criminal Stars and Stripes, played by Jim Carrey in a strong but disappointingly brief supporting role. Both Mindy and Dave are aiming to avoid trouble, but they are forced to retaliate when their former nemesis Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) reinvents himself as a black-clad supervillain, recruiting an evil gang to help him destroy Kick-Ass.

Wadlow proves his action skills with a handful of graphically violent fight sequences, but ultimately Kick-Ass 2 is cluttered with clumsy jokes, crude caricatures and dumb teen-movie clichés.

Follow us

And follow us on Facebook for discussions, entertainment, reviews, wellness and news.