Movie review: A sad sequel that fails to 'Kick Arse'

MOVIE REVIEW: What was once so rad is now just plain sad. Kick Ass 2 is everything its subversive predecessor so cleverly avoided becoming.

WHAT was once so rad is now just plain sad.

The original Kick-Ass was a maverick excitement generator, sending up and taking down the entire comic-book superhero genre with genuine, game-changing panache.

The utterly terrible sequel Kick-Ass 2 is everything its subversive predecessor so cleverly avoided becoming: a witlessly violent, mean and misogynistic affair.

The all-new adventures of amateur crimefighters Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) are shoddily scrimped together, and then splattered all over the place at best.

At their worst, proceedings amount to a new low for mainstream cinema in 2013. One truly scummy scene where attempted rape is played for laughs sums up the many depressingly bad impulses being indulged here.

It is significant that Jim Carrey - who sluggishly staggers through this excremental squall of celluloid as a grotesque shadow of his former self - openly disowned Kick-Ass 2 months ahead of release.

When someone paid to be in a major movie feels free to give it such a major slamming, you have to sit up and take notice. Carrey has been in enough crappy projects in his time to make the right call.

The plot is a flimsy extension of the first outing. Kick-Ass has been out of the crook-crunching biz for an extended period, and wants back in.

While he has been away, the market has become flooded with everyday superheroes. Rather than fly solo, Kick-Ass joins an organised costume-militia run by an ex-commando named Sgt Stars-and-Stripes (Carrey).

As for Hit-Girl, she spends the first half of the picture making a half-hearted attempt at living as a normal human being.

However, once that criminally insane rich kid
Chris D'Amico (an awful Christopher Mintz-Plasse) returns to reinvent himself
as a supervillain, Hit-Girl swiftly answers the call to (severed) arms.

With a moronic screenplay unable to dredge up any decent laughs or inspired action sequences, Kick-Ass 2 joylessly joins the dots from one meaningless bout of carnage to the next. Production values are cheap, bordering on straight-to-home video standard.

Ethical values are non-existent. Avoid.

Directors: Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down)

Starring: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Jim Carrey, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Morris Chestnut.

Give this bummer the boot