TORONTO — Shot last year in Toronto, Kick-Ass 2 is the sequel to 2010’s modest box office success Kick-Ass — also filmed in Southern Ontario — about a group of unlikely young superheroes.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are among the stars reprising their roles. Canada’s Jim Carrey shows up as Colonel Stars and Stripes.
It’s funny and it’s violent — but is it worth the price of admission? Here’s a look at what some of the reviews:
In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw said the movie delivers “less in the way of boot-buttock contact” than the original.
“It’s a moderate follow-up to the first exhilarating adventure,” he wrote.
Bradshaw complained Carrey’s role “amounts to hardly more than an extended cameo” and singled out Moretz as the “real star” of Kick-Ass 2.
“Body-doubled or not, Moretz’s martial-arts scenes look terrifically good, and she is coolly assured in every scene she is in,” he opined.
Anthony Quinn of The Independent concurred.
“Moretz is a dynamic presence, and fires off her spiky one-liners with magnificent timing,” he wrote. “The downside of her star quality is that she puts the rest in a pretty feeble light.”
Quinn was also otherwise disappointed with the sequel.
“It rattles along, a laugh here, a laugh there, occasionally reminding you of the better film that preceded it.”
Todd Gilchrist of The Verge said Taylor-Johnson as the titular character is the least interesting of the ensemble.
“His remarkable lack of presence is even more apparent in comparison to the new characters that the film introduces,” he wrote, describing Kick-Ass 2 as “a flaccid commentary that scarcely manages to implement the genre conventions it aspires to examine.”
According to Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times, the movie is “an uncertain jumble rather than a true exploration of outrage, violence and identity.”
He added: “The sequel’s violence feels soft-pedaled compared with the first film, continually shying away from being too graphic and with little of the gleeful revelry that give the first Kick-Ass its energy and punch.”
Postmedia reviewer Chris Knight called Kick-Ass 2 “sporadically funny” and “wildly uneven.”
Knight also took issue with at least one of the film’s locations.
“Toronto’s Yonge Street once again tries and mostly fails to stand in for New York, unless the Big Apple has Mr. Sub locations I wasn’t aware of.”
Kyle Smith of the New York Post compared Kick-Ass 2 to being trapped in a room “with the funniest guy in seventh grade.”
He noted the film’s graphic violence.
“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,” wrote Smith. “And for all the arterial spray on-screen, I never got the sense that there was a beating heart to the movie.”
He added: “I did wish the wit could have been as consistently sharp as the many instruments of bloodletting.”
Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald — who called the movie a “lame, leaden sequel” — was no fan of the cast.
“Practically no one in Kick-Ass 2 looks like they want to be there,” said Rodriguez.
“Taylor-Johnson, a British actor who made for an endearing American kid in the first film, looks much too old for the part this time, and his attempt to make his voice sound younger is noticeable to point of distraction. Mintz-Plasse gives the first all-out bad performance of his career, turning his demented character into a grating, insufferable brat.”
Entertainment Weekly critic Chris Nashawaty said Kick-Ass 2 is a “witless and unnecessary sequel” made up of “tone-deaf jokes and cringe-inducing carnage.”
The overall tone, Nashawaty wrote, “glamorizes videogame-style bloodshed, never quite finding the line between satire and nihilism.”
At The Detroit News, Adam Graham opined Kick-Ass 2 is “an ugly and joyless exercise in brutality.”
Graham wrote: “It’s both too much and not enough, and the savvy wit and inspiration on display in the first film is absent in this dumbed-down, warmed over retread. Consider its ass kicked.”
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