Falling flat on your ass: Kick Ass 2 Review

The world’s favourite would-be-super-hero in a green wetsuit Kick Ass is back on cinema screens.

Kick-Ass 2 to set two years after the first film when a teenager called Dave decided to become a real life super hero. 

We find him still patrolling the streets on a nightly basis. But his stand-up and be counted attitude has spawned legions of other would-be-heroes. Dave joins a team of them but his actions draw the attention of Red Mist, the son of the crime boss he killed in the previous film. Dave turns to Mindy (Hit Girl) for help but she has given up the trade to focus on high school. 

While the story gets off to an energized and funny start it soon falls flat. The first twenty minutes are fun and the last half hour of the film delivers great action, great jokes and an impressive climax. But the material in between is just, well, boring. It’s not terrible, it just isn’t interesting. In a nutshell it focuses too much on whiney teenagers, like Mindy…actually it’s all about Mindy…whining. 

It’s hard to believe this was the same foul-mouthed, ass-kicking kid from the first film who thought nothing about killing someone. In this film she suddenly decides she cares what other people think about her, which isn’t believable given her previous character convictions. Also given the nature of the film I couldn’t take any of it seriously. I understand the film was trying to build character but this just went into overkill. It dragged on and was completely unnecessary. 

Parking that to one side, the action and fight scenes had me glued and were a lot of fun. Probably the best villain in the film was Mother Russia. When you see her in action you’ll know why. The only action sequence I didn’t like was the van chase scene near the end. The green screen was just horrible. I don’t know if this was done deliberately to create a comic book style feel to it, but either way it didn’t work. The characters looked like cardboard cut-outs flying down a motorway.

When the film did make a joke it was hilarious each time, although there were long pauses between them. This definitely wasn’t as funny as the first movie, which is a shame as it did have some really good moments.

Too much teenage angst and not enough jokes diminish what would have otherwise been a great film.

Kick Ass 2 gets 6/10.