Movie Review: Kick Ass 2

Remember the summer of ’10? Pop Idol was in the charts, the prince of England got married and Kick Ass was the surprise summer smash-hit blockbuster superhero film the post-modern public wanted to see. The film followed the story of Ashley Kibultz, a nerd who gets injured in a fist fight against goons, granting him the power of nerve damage. He then goes onto meet Nicholas Cage and Hit Girl, a sassy mouthed feminist icon with quadruple the recognition of the girl from Leon and packing a mean arsenal! Of course a sequel was inevitable, and in 2013 we were lucky enough to have one grace the silver screen starring some of the original cast and some new faces (John Lugizimano, Jim Carrey) to deliver the action-packed fast talking hyper-violent continuation of the plot of the previous film. Now and then when a film is really good, the studio executives decide that they would like another version of the film told at a different time in the story in order to remove imagination from audiences. This is called a sequel, a prequel or now and then a parallequal. In this case the film picks up where the last one finished; Hit Girl is in high school and Ashley Kibultz is getting his ass handed to him on a daily basis. The events over the next two and half hours take a variety of twists and turns but trust me, the plot is relatively simple to follow and probably one you’ve seen before.

It is an important film not because of its quality, but because of its context. It is the quintessential film of the decade, combining references to modern technology that will become outdated within five years, a lazy kind of CSI: Miami cinematography and dialogue that makes me imagine the words on the page of a script and how somebody could bring themselves to write them down in the first place. The major themes of the film are of an Oedipal quality; there are no fathers. If there are, they die. If they resemble any kind of seniority combined with masculinity, they die. This sets the film in a Freudian tone and should be interpreted as such. There are many references to sex throughout the movie, although this is often done immaturely. Somebody is called a cock sucker rather than anybody actually sucking cock. It is strange to live in a society that accepts violence yet not sexuality. Pornographic parody films could be seen as coming from a dimension in which violence was switched with sex. Soldiers would have sex on the battlefield, superheroes would kiss each other repeatedly, there would be romantic films where people would threaten each other for an hour before one murders the other. If Kick Ass 2 was from this bizarro world, what would it resemble?

The film also places itself in a metanarrative about sequels and comic books with the subtlety of a hippopotamus shitting in your bath. It is as if the writers knew that the film was entirely ridden with cliché, although rather than offer an alternative they had characters simply turn slowly towards the camera with a smug smile on their faces, often saying phrases like ‘You’re spending your time watching this movie?’ or ‘If you’re having fun watching this you probably haven’t seen that many.’ And stuff like that. This can be quite a risk in the writing of a sequel as it depends on quality to make the joke amusing else the audience feel mildly insulted and maybe even disorientated. In real life do people run around shouting to each other how ‘this isn’t a film’? I have only ever heard that phrase spoken in films, especially Kick Ass 2.

Overall I'd have to give this movie a 76% 'fresh' rating. Maybe watch it in one minute intervals over the course of a month, this was the intended way to experience it.