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Kicked Out

"Kick-Ass", well, kicked ass. The Matthew Vaughn-directed Mark Millar comic book adaptation took moviegoers by surprise with its tongue-in-cheek story of unempowered high school student Dave Lizewski reinventing himself as an average Joe superhero... and joining forces with the truly dangerous Big Daddy and Hit Girl in the process. After the film's unquestionable success, the inevitability of a sequel left only a question of when, not if. After three years' wait, that sequel, "Kick-Ass 2", is here.

Dave is still a high school student, and has somewhat regressed back into nerddom, his days as a costumed crusader behind him for now. New to school is freshman Mindy Macready (aka Hit Girl, played by Chloë Grace Moretz), who is dropped off at school every morning by her guardian, her father's old partner Det. Marcus Williams, only to hop in a cab to be taken to her secret training loft, where she spends her days keeping her vigilante skills in tip top shape. Though her "superhero" father, Big Daddy, is now dead, she still moonlights as Hit Girl, much to Marcus's disapproval, doling out her own brand of justice alone.

It doesn't take long before Dave decides he wants to dust off his Kick-Ass suit, reunite with Hit Girl, and get back to crime fighting. He is, of course, woefully out of shape, and in a classic montage, the two set to work. But things don't quite go as planned and after their first night on the streets, Dave is injured and Mindy is caught, with Marcus forcing her to promise to hang up the cape and try being a teenage girl for a while.

This is where weaknesses in the script (penned by director Jeff Wadlow) really start to show. The fundamental problem with "Kick-Ass 2" is that it's all over the place. It just doesn't know what it wants to be. When Mindy turns her back on her vigilante side, she's thrust into a "Mean Girls"-esque high school horrorshow. Meanwhile, Dave teams up with other (mostly inept) vigilantes, lead by an unrecognizable Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes, to continue fighting the good fight. Nemesis Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) makes his return, rebranded as "The Motherfucker" in an Oedipal twist, and recruits his own super-villain team. With inconsistent pacing, things go from amusingly (at times even slapsticky) violent to downright dark.

We all have that friend who will take a joke and push it and push it and push it until he's gone three steps too far and everyone gets uncomfortable. Jeff Wadlow is that guy and this script goes to unnecessary places, jarringly pulling the viewer out of the quick-paced action we've all come to expect and throwing him into some truly graphic and horrifying situations. Jim Carrey has now-famously publicly denounced this film for being too violent. Questions about whether he should've ever taken the part in the first place aside, you kind of get it. Things get rough - at times, too rough - leaving the audience frankly confused.

"Kick-Ass" owed much of its success to pint-sized powerhouse Ms. Moretz, who stole the show with her spunky, foul-mouthed, martial competence. Now, well, she's grown up: while she still has charisma to spare, the novelty of a tween superhero is missing. And with Hit Girl on the shelf as Mindy negotiates the horrible social hierarchy of high school, not even she can save this inconsistent mess. Like an ill-fated rooftop leap, "Kick-Ass 2" falls short in every way.