Kick-Ass 2: More real-life than super

The element of surprise worked in the favor of 2010’s Kick-Ass. While the Rainn Wilson movie Super, which came out about the same time, took on a similar theme of everyday people trying to become superheroes — Kick-Ass benefited from the brilliant casting of Chloe Grace Moretz as Hit-Girl, a smack-talking badass trained in martial arts. The sequel Kick-Ass 2 doesn’t have any real surprises. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie — as played by Moretz, Mindy McReady/Hit-Girl is a terrific character who delivers some great punches and great lines. Though fun, it’s not as fun as its predecessor, perhaps in part because Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), who died in Kick-Ass is no longer around, and Hit-Girl’s surrogate father Marcus (Morris Chestunt) is essentially a non-entity.

The plot here is simple. Chris D’Amico/Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has decided to get revenge on Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). So he’s borrowed his dead mother’s dominatrix gear as a costume and christened himself “The Mother Fucker.” He’s also assembled an army of super villains that’s led by the seemingly unstoppable Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), a ruthless fighter who, in one scene, single-handedly takes down a handful of cops.

Kick-Ass has joined a team of his own. Dubbed Justice Forever, it’s led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), a mob enforcer who’s become a born-again Christian. Kick-Ass tries to get Hit-Girl to join the team, but she’s trying to leave her crime-fighting persona in the past. (It’s here that the film stumbles into Heathers-meets-Carrie territory and falters a bit.)

Too much of the movie centers on Hit-Girl’s teen angst. In a promise to her deceased dad, she tries to obey her caretaker’s wishes and make friends with the popular girls at her high school, only to discover that they secretly hate her and her non-conformist ways. All of the resulting pouting and insecurity is out of character for Mindy. The coming-of-age messaging ends up being even more cartoony than the comic book revenge story and its related violence.

But it’s all good when Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass are throwing punches and brawling. Be sure to stick around past the credits to see what, if anything, might next for the real life superheroes.