Rating: 3.5/5
This is one of the extremely few times that I firmly believe that one specific scene ruined the entire experience. As a sequel to the pretty well received black comedy movie, KA2 comedically succeeds its predecessor for the most part and was able to bring out a laugh, but it was equally if not worse at being bad at building a compelling story, just like KA1.
The story picks off sometime after the first, enough for Mindy to grow up but before Dave leaves high school, and both protagonists had resorted back to a normal life. However, thanks to the inspiration of Kick Ass in the first movie, more costume vigilantes begin to show up in the streets, which prompts Dave to want to return back to fighting crime and Mindy had also been continuing her combat training, even though Marcus, her legal guardian, prohibits her to ever put herself into danger again. Later, Dave joins a gang of other costume vigilantes who are each broken in their own ways and fighting crime is their way to cope with their lives, this is where the film will try to express some themes of individual identity and what it means to protect, but it often gets interrupted by comedic gags that ruins the mood(a pattern that we’ll see frequently). While all this is happening, Chris D’amico, the son of the villain of the last movie vows revenge against Kick Ass for his murder and becomes The Mother Fucker and recruits a gang of villains and attempts to reign New York City with terror. Finally, the movie breaks into a climactic battle between good and evil and it is up to Mindy and Dave to decide whether they should return to their old life or not.
I think the biggest issue with this movie is the fact that its premise for both installments were inherently against logic; in our world, we know why superheroes don’t exist due to complicated politics, and because of that, the entire perspective of the first movie was to be humorous and slightly critical of this idea as well to play into reality while giving us an unserious story. However, KA2 tries to tackle a lot of themes that are more serious such as the embracement of one’s identity, real-world corruption, and revenge, which for the most part dilutes its comedic nature. Because of that, the comedic layer of protection that gives the audience a slightly extended suspension of disbelief about its premise tends to fall off, leaving the audience with just a goofy movie that takes itself too seriously. I do believe that KA2 successfully asks certain questions about vigilantes such as “do they make the world really a better place?” And this message is very well executed at the end of the movie, but that really just showed how barebones the first half of the movie was in trying to make the audience take it seriously. Finally, I would also like to say that the scatological scene between Mindy and her bullies at school REALLY made me uncomfortable and because of that, I seriously recommend anyone to skip the scene where everyone starts to throw up.
It’s an okay movie, but just watch the first one. If you really want to see the sequel, skip till the half time mark passes so a story actually develops.