Review: Kick-Ass 2

When the original "Kick-Ass" was released in movie theaters it was savaged by some critics for violence against its young protagonists.  Rogert Ebert was especially harsh and it's just as well he wasn't alive to watch the sequel because it takes things up a notch.  Really I'd say this is the darkest superhero movie ever put on film.

It's really more of a horror movie in all the gruesome ways characters die, including death by lawnmower on the back of a police cruiser.  Though as with some horror movies there's a lot of black comedy involved.  For instance when the evil "Motherf**ker" tries to rape Kick-Ass's superhero girlfriend but can't get it up.  Insert your own Viagra joke.

Like "The Dark Knight" the plot revolves around the idea of escalation.  In the original movie a dorky kid named Dave puts on a wetsuit and gets a couple of batons and decides to be a superhero--with predictably bad results.  Meanwhile a disgruntled former cop and his young daughter have been doing real costumed vigilante work as Big Daddy and Hit Girl.  (Spoiler:  Big Daddy dies and Hit Girl is remanded into the custody of his ex-partner on the police force.)  In the climactic last battle, Kick-Ass blows up a mobster with a missile launcher.

A year or two later, Dave is getting antsy to put the wetsuit back on, so he meets up with Hit Girl to undergo some training.  But when her foster dad guilts her into putting away the costume and being a "real girl" Dave hooks up with some other wanna-be heroes, starting with "Dr. Gravity" (Donald Faison of "Scrubs" fame) and ultimately a group led by "Colonel America" (Jim Carrey), who used to be a mob enforcer until he was born again.

They conveniently write out the love of Dave's life from the last movie in one scene to free him up to start dating "Night Bitch," whose fate I've referenced above.  For while Dave and the heroes are gathering, the son of the mobster he blew up who used to go by the heroic moniker "Red Mist" has decided to become a supervillain called "Motherf**ker" and starts gathering his own personal Legion of Doom.  In particular he wants to bring Kick-Ass down.

After a string of grisly murders and an almost rape, there's finally a titanic clash between good and evil.

Whether you like the movie or not depends on which side of the "Won't someone please think of the children?!" argument you come down on.  Me, I know it's a movie, so I know the kids are never in any real danger.  Also in scenes like when Hit Girl is fighting bad guys on top of a van the CGI/green screen effects are just so awful there's no way you can mistake them for being real.  While it's dark and graphic it does a good job of depicting what a "real" costumed vigilante universe would be like.  It's not all upside-down rain kisses and heroic Hans Zimmer scores.  And it depicts perfectly why when I wrote a column called "Practical Superheroism" on my old blog I always urged people to never, EVER try it at home, because really you're more likely to get your ass kicked than to kick any ass.

In case you're wondering, there are all the pieces in place for a sequel.  "Kick-Ass 3" is currently on its 6th of 8 issues at your local comic book store.  This second movie didn't do great at the box office so without a bunch of foreign or DVD sales I'm not sure that will ever get made.

Anyway, because of where I come down on this argument, I'd give it a solid 2.5/5, which is my grade for competent, but not spectacular movies.  I'm a Hard-Ass like that.  Though my superhero name would probably be Fat-Ass because they already used The Blob.

That is all.