I do get a chuckle out of movies with wildly inappropriate behavior, rude language and ultramayhem, especially when they involve children, but “Kick-Ass 2” sometimes felt like being trapped in a room with the funniest guy in seventh grade.
As in the superior 2010 original, “KA2” sets out on a cheeky mission to do everything pretty much the opposite of a Spider-Man movie. Nerdy teen Dave (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) tried to train himself to be a vigilante superhero called Kick-Ass, with largely comical results, only to join forces with a sweet little girl named Mindy (Chloë Grace Moretz), who had, with the help of her cop father, actually succeeded in turning herself into a lethal fighting machine called Hit Girl. Hit Girl made her unforgettable entrance in a room full of soon-to-die bad guys behind the line, “All right you c - - ts, let’s see what you can do now!” She has a go at topping that zinger a couple of times in the sequel.
She doesn’t quite succeed because a joke isn’t as funny the second time around, and maybe especially not if you shout it. This movie screams, “Look at how naughty we are!” at every opportunity. Example: A sworn enemy (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) whose father was killed by Kick-Ass. Now he prefers to be addressed as supervillain “The Motherf - - ker.” He wears a black patent leather set of S&M gear that he found in his mother’s belongings after he accidentally fried her to death in her tanning bed.
Be forewarned that there is a fairly amazing display of violence, most of it involving youngsters. Twenty-five years ago a film like this would have inspired sober op-eds and congressional hearings. Today we realize the fall of the Republic is not going to ensue, but that doesn’t mean the movie’s frantic lunges at the inappropriate don’t become tiresome at times. And for all the arterial spray on-screen, I never got the sense that there was a beating heart to the movie.
Kick-Ass himself is kind of a bore, especially compared to Hit Girl, and she spends too much of the movie renouncing her superhero identity to please her guardian (Morris Chestnut) while getting caught up with trying to be popular with a high school clique of neo-Heathers. This collision of styles leads to a gross-out scene that is more vivid than funny.
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Jim Carrey, or at least a version of him, is also on hand to liven things up, as a former mobster in military gear now calling himself Col. Stars and Stripes. Carrey, underneath a mound of makeup, plays it straight as a gravelly voiced killer, but why go with faux Mickey Rourke when the real one is still around? (Also: Rourke wouldn’t have wussed out and denounced his own movie pre-release as Carrey has done.)
“KA2,” written and directed by the little-known Jeff Wadlow, taking over for Matthew Vaughn, is less grounded than the delightful original, more hectic and blaring — a cinematic shock jock who needs to push your buttons. I’d rather watch it again than revisit any of those dully earnest Spidey epics, but I did wish the wit could have been as consistently sharp as the many instruments of bloodletting.