Kick-Ass 2 reunites the core cast of the original (the characters who survived, anyway) for another dose of super-violent mayhem. A fair amount of noise has been made in the media of this violence, particularly after new co-star Jim Carrey publicly announced his refusal to promote the film he'd completed, citing that events like Sandy Hook changed his thinking such that he could no longer endorse such a violent film. (I guess similar mass shootings prior to the movie's filming had no such impact on him? There have been more than a few.)
I could probably do a whole other post ranting about the specious connection between fictional violence and actual violence (short version: a huge portion of the world consumes American entertainment, the same violent movies, TV shows, and video games we do; violent media therefore fails to explain why our stats on violence are so much higher than theirs). But to stick to the subject at hand, Kick-Ass and its new sequel are a more rare breed, in that the movies really examine the consequences of violence.
Kick-Ass 2 shows a young teenage girl struggling to honor the memory of her birth father (killed violently before her eyes) while keeping the promises she's made to her adopted one. It shows the consequences -- good and bad -- of what happens when more and more people are inspired to seek vigilante justice. And it all revolves a character who is to a large extent living the evil version of Batman's original story; a young man is motivated to become a supervillain after his father is killed by a hero. And, specifically to Jim Carrey's flawed point, his own character in this movie carries a gun but refuses to actually load it.
In short, much of what was inspired and great about the first Kick-Ass is here in the sequel. It's a very entertaining romp full of laugh-out-loud jokes, thoughtful (but never overt) social commentary, and fun performances. But, as is so often the case with sequels, it's not as good as the original. The biggest problem in my mind is that the most entertaining character of the series, Chloë Grace Moretz's Hit Girl, doesn't even seem to be in the same movie as the rest of the cast. As everyone else is starring in a sequel to Kick-Ass, she's off in a remake of Mean Girls, an at-times entertaining one, but one that often feels like two batches of film canisters got accidentally shuffled together.
The visual effects are also uniformly terrible. To be clear, I'm not the sort of person who enjoys a film solely based on the quality of the effects. Summer is loaded with blockbusters that are stacked high with eye-popping visuals, but with storytelling that ranges from uninspired at best to aggressively deficient at worst. I generally just don't care about the effects. But there does come a point where they're so bad, so unconvincing, that it pulls you out of the experience. Such is the case with Kick-Ass 2. The major chase sequence in the final act uses green-screening so bad, it looks like decades-old work. And the CG accompanying a sight gag called the "Sick Stick" would seem more at home in an animated cartoon.
But overall, the movie is great ride. I've already mentioned Chloë Grace Moretz, and she is once again excellent in this movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is again sympathetic as the title character -- and asked to play some much deeper emotional material this time out. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (best known as "McLovin" from Superbad, but who picks up a very different nickname here) manages to negotiate being laughable, pitiable, and threatening. And though Jim Carrey's role here is surprisingly small, it's also surprisingly good. He leaves the Carrey bag of tricks at home, disappearing behind his character's mask and thankfully doing nothing that makes it feel like he's trying to steal the spotlight with his usual antics.
I give Kick-Ass 2 a B+. If you like the first, I don't see how you wouldn't like the second.
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