Review of Kick-Ass 2 (2013) by Katie B — 17 Jul 2018

I generally liked KA1 with its twist on a theme. KA2 has lost that surprise, and is wildly uneven tone from campy sentimentality to brutal, self aware violence. This movie is not a total washout - Hit Girl is always fun to watch, but much of the rest of the movie is just a mess. Kick Ass himself isn't much more than a passive observer in all this, waffling between 'I should dress up' and 'I shouldn't dress up' with motivations being iffy at best ('my dad died, so I should NOT be a superhero' - HUH????). Other superheros seemed tacked on with random backstories and horrible outfits. Hit Girl loses her confidence? Red Mist is back, and not in a good way as Mother Lover. He at least seems a bit self aware that the whole situation is absurd - I think the movie could have used more self aware humor the way it gets deployed in Deadpool. And John Leguizamo is in this! WTF? The whole time he is rolling his eyes, ostensibly at Mother Lover's requests, but probably more like 'how did I end up here?'.

Again, it SOUNDS bad, and incoherence is one of my pet peeves, but it was kinda fun and campy and over the top fun to watch.