Kick-Ass 2 is a heartfelt movie. With a message resonating within all of us; what does it mean to be a hero in the real world?
Or at least it says it does. I kind of lost track of any message after a teenage girl shot vomit and crap out of her body at the same time.
Spoilers below.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first twenty minutes or so of Kick-Ass 2. Going into the theater, I was a little hesitant. I remember the comic “Kick-Ass 2” being a really vulgar mess that, while having a character named “The Motherfucker”, still took itself too seriously and was, overall, just really disgusting. Kick-Ass 2 begins with Hit-Girl struggling over whether or not she should be proud of the training her dad, Nicolas Cage, gave her and whether or not it was worth the childhood she never had. You, the audience, know this because every character’s line is basically a miniature soliloquy expressing exactly what they’re thinking and why. Meanwhile, Kick-Ass joins Justice Forever, a superhero team consisting of Jim Carrey, Turk from Scrubs, a couple straight out of Best in Show, some dude, Night Bitch, and Kick-Ass’s friend who my family insists I look just like. Together, they rough up some criminals in some really great fight scenes. Yes, they’re ridiculous and violent, but they’re incredibly fun and a little inspiring at points, even bordering on too good to be true. Jim Carrey is genuinely one of the best parts of the film, even if he’s not in it that long. For a while, you might think you’re watching a really good movie. And then the rest of the film kicks in.
Someone on set apparently screwed up and replaced half of Kick-Ass 2’s scripts with an awful remake of Mean Girls. Hit-Girl tries so hard to leave her old life behind and become the popular girl at school, befriending the schools’ Heathers for no discernible reason. Hit-Girl, who was all ninja stabs and gunplay a few minutes ago, now wants to be one of the most popular girls in school. Granted, it makes sense for Hit-Girl to try and become normal within the context of the film, but why the hell does she need to go straight for being one of the popular girls? She’s never given any proper explanation for her motives except getting aroused when the girls show her a Union J music video at a slumber party. Also, congratulations to Union J for being the first band I thought was made up specifically for a movie, then looked up, and discovered was real. Despite that, I still refuse to believe you’re not a parody of One Direction, in Kick-Ass or the real world. Hit-Girl is without a doubt one of the most defining parts of Kick-Ass so it’s a complete mystery as to why they would keep her out of the Hit-Girl persona for so much of the movie when she’s one of the top selling points. No offense to Chloë Grace Moretz, she does a great job with what she has, but what she has is just so unintuitive and dumb.
Granted, this subplot leads to some really cool moments like when Mindy imagines herself fighting as Hit-Girl when auditioning for a dance team. Then, after being pushed too far by the Heathers, she brings a taser that Nicolas Cage used to own that causes anyone hit by it to vomit and explode diarrhea simultaneously.
You know how, in movies, they have a hose attached to the actor or actresses’ mouth that spews a volcano of tapioca to replicate projectile vomiting?
Did you know that if you colored the tapioca brown and shot it out an actress’s wazoo it looks like poop?
Kick-Ass 2.
I think it was at this point in the movie that I checked my ticket to make sure I hadn’t accidentally wandered into Scary Movie VI and was just watching an extended parody of Kick-Ass 2. Unfortunately, I was in the right theater and what was happening before me was made with sincere effort. It’s embarrassing watching this movie go on for hours with needlessly crude jokes more telegraphed than a clown holding a pie next to a man wearing a shirt that says “I don’t care for pie very much.” The plot goes along similarly with Chekhov’s guns that are less mentioned and more pointed at with blaring sirens. Boy oh boy, I bet that shark in a tank is going to stay asleep the entire time. Oh golly, how could I have seen the alternative coming. You know that scene in the comic? Yeah that scene? The that scene that everyone swore up and down would not be recreated in the film? It’s recreated. Though, instead of The Mother Fucker and his crew raping a poor girl who has next to nothing to do with the plot, we watch McLovin fail to get an erection, grumble, and tell his enforcers to beat up a girl who kind of has something to do with the plot instead. Someone thought making a rape scene an attempted rape scene with erectile dysfunction and 20 seconds of silent reaction faces that made me think a laugh track was about to start would be an improvement. It kind of wasn’t. It kind of really wasn’t.
Continued belowThere’s actually a lot about this movie that’s really not okay. Everything with The Mother Fucker is trying way too hard. Not just in how his name is “The Mother Fucker”, that gets lampshaded a lot. Everything MF says gets lampshaded, but that doesn’t excuse anything. If you call someone a racist slur and then say it was ironic, it’s still a racist slur. “You can’t say this movie’s racist because a rich white male dressed his two minority heroes in horribly racist caricatures! We already said how awful that was within the movie itself! What’s that? The main good guy team ends up having all white people with one exception and the bad guys have three foreigner stereotypes and a dude named ‘The Tumor’? That’s okay, we’re just being zany! Here’s some rape jokes!” I don’t know where Kick-Ass 2 got its humor, but Marville just called and they want a writing credit.
I mentioned Scary Movie before and I’m going to bring it up again. Kick-Ass 2 is to Watchmen what Scary Movie is to Scream. Normal people failing as superheroes? Check. Parent hero raising a child to fight? Check. Rape scene? Check check checkarooni. They’re both vapid “comedies” that saw a piece of relatively subtle satire, decided it needed more dicks and shit and then shipped this out to the world. You know what happens when you attach shit and dicks to something people love? You get arrested.
Normally that’s whatever. Scary Movie exists in its own corner of Hollywood where we all agree it’s pretty harmlessly awful. Unfortunately, due to him winning a card fight between himself, Grant Morrison, and Satan in 1999, Mark Millar has somehow managed to convince people that Kick-Ass is just as valid a superhero film as The Dark Knight or Iron Man. As a result, when I went to a family reunion a couple hours after seeing Kick-Ass 2 and my relatives got tired of asking me if I was ready for college, they asked me if I liked that new Kick-Ass film. I must. I like all those superhero things. Ah, they’re all the same. Except they’re not. I don’t like comics where white people are constantly beating up minorities. I don’t like comics that treat rape as a joke, or a plot device. And I don’t like comics that take the idea of a superhero, of someone who actually wants to be more than they already are and help others, just to shit all over it without offering any valid commentary of their own.
Kick-Ass 2, you’re on the same level as Big Bang Theory. You present yourself to mainstream audiences as what geek culture represents. To you, to my family, to the millions of people who will never take comics seriously without giving anything a shot, and to the few pigs within geek culture who are loud and disgusting enough to validate your claims; comic culture is misogynist, racist, violent, gross, and a haven for little boys who will never mentally progress past middle school.
Kick-Ass 2, please gently fuck off.
Final Verdict: 2.3 – Even though some of this movie is pretty good, please spend the money on something less racist and patriarchal.
Bonus Section of Random Thoughts in Kick-Ass 2 that warrant mentioning.
– Hit-Girl kisses Kick-Ass because whatever, opposite gendered friendships can’t exist. Other than that, she’s great once the high school plot’s done with.
– Marcus, Hit-Girl’s step-dad, is actually pretty great and deserves a better script.
– Jim Carrey should have had more screen time.
– I have no complaints about Ass-Kicker at all. Best part of the film.
– Kick-Ass was inspired to become a superhero because his dad bought him a “Superior” poster as a kid in 1998-ish. I don’t know what type of dad would buy his young son Mark Millar merchandise, but it’s the type who probably had it coming when he gets killed by the guy who played McLovin.
