2010’s Kick-Ass, a brilliant, brazen, charcoal black
action-comedy about a shy, nerdy teen trying to make it as a crime fighter
was a breath of fresh air, the anti-Spiderman
young superhero adventure I’d been waiting for. This screwy, savvy,
self-conscious and self-satisfied sequel fills the screen with even more
arterial spray and lays the irony on even thicker. By the second outing, however,
it’s getting harder to distinguish Kick-Ass from the polished,
name-brand superhero flicks it seemed to offer us respite from.
While still bone-crushingly brutal, Kick-Ass
2 drops its punchy predecessor’s attempt to pass the visceral, vicious
violence off as something shocking or subversive. Gory, gimmicky, and grisly, the
first film was deliciously and insolently provocative; it introduced crime-fighting
children who toted guns, shot to kill, and cursed like Samuel L. Jackson. A
joke is rarely as funny the second time you hear it, but Kick-Ass 2 offers a fresh infusion of comic energy in the loose,
flippant approach to its source material, the ongoing Marvel series by Mark
Millar and John S. Romita Jr.
