Kick-Ass 2
Universal Pictures | Release Date: August 16, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
41
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
20
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeAug 14, 2013
The film delivers almost exactly what fans of the first installment are hoping for. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlAug 14, 2013
The most welcome change is the tone. Wadlow has decided he's making a straight-up comedy, and he demonstrates a knack for it. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 15, 2013
It's rambunctiously amusing but the laughs clot in your throat. There's a meaner streak this time to Kick-Ass and Hit Girl's exploits, or maybe Carrey's sensitivity is justified. Either way, the third act of Kick-Ass 2 is a visceral beatdown. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithAug 15, 2013
I do get a chuckle out of movies with wildly inappropriate behavior, rude language and ultramayhem, especially when they involve children, but Kick-Ass 2 sometimes felt like being trapped in a room with the funniest guy in seventh grade. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 15, 2013
Tone isn't the movie's sole problem. There's something off-putting about Christopher Mitz-Plasse as the chief bad guy. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriAug 15, 2013
Kick-Ass 2, a movie that, for all its predictable sequel-ness, manages to conjure up pretty much the same dark magic that the earlier film did, albeit with more troubling results. Believe it or not, Kick-Ass 2 is even more of a provocation than the first Kick-Ass. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin ChangAug 14, 2013
As diverting as this action-packed caper often is, it feels not just weightless but emotionally and morally stunted whenever it veers into grown-up dramatic territory. Read full review
60
EmpireOwen WilliamsAug 12, 2013
A more modest success than the first "Kick-Ass," but still of-a-piece with its scurrilous predecessor. Nobody flies a jet-pack up a skyscraper this time, but Kick-Ass 2 still has its share of over-the-top action, and the sweary laughs are just about intact. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt RisleyAug 12, 2013
A fun if sporadically schizoid return to one of the brighter, brasher comic-bookers of recent years. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeAug 12, 2013
The best thing about ‘Kick-Ass’ was Moretz, and Hit-Girl still gets the best lines. Like the first film, Kick-Ass 2 pulls the reality of teen life into its fantasy. Read full review
56
Film.comWilliam GossAug 15, 2013
Faithful to the superficial thrills and flaws of the original. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyAug 15, 2013
Moretz, who is 16 now, can't manufacture the same that's-so-wrong jolt she managed the first time around. Back then, it was hilariously taboo to see a little girl spout arias of profanity. Now, she's just another teenager swearing. Like the rest of the film, what was once shocking now just elicits a shrug. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 15, 2013
Like its own protagonists, Kick-Ass 2 can’t decide what it wants to be when it grows up: a vessel for unhinged vengeance and destruction or a meta-critique of those same impulses. In going for both, it winds up being neither. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 15, 2013
Kick-Ass 2 has a mean-spirited vigilante streak the first film lacked (it seemed more concerned with justice, in its way), as well as a fatigue. It’s still funny, particularly when Hit Girl spews profanity and wields weapons. It’s just not as good. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 15, 2013
A weird mix of the refreshing and the dispiriting, Kick-Ass 2 is appealing in its brutal honesty and repellent in its honest brutality. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsAug 15, 2013
To stand out in a crowded marketplace, a sequel can’t just kick ass — it has to blow minds. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 15, 2013
What seemed edgy and brash in Kick-Ass is now routine and old-hat. The first movie was a brash satire on formulaic comic-book movies — exactly the sort of picture the sequel turns out to be. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Aug 14, 2013
Even with its edges sanded down, Kick-Ass 2 is unmistakably Millaresque — a juvenile comedy of excess, in which skewering adolescent power fantasies looks an awful lot like indulging in them. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAug 14, 2013
Kick-Ass 2 returns with the original’s rollicking sense of vulgarity and bodily trauma fully intact, but the story has more plot lines to string together than absolutely necessary. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenAug 14, 2013
Kick-Ass 2 is a lesser version of what it appears to be, an uncertain jumble rather than a true exploration of outrage, violence and identity. Read full review
50
The PlaylistGabe ToroAug 14, 2013
The crime isn’t that Kick-Ass 2 is vulgar (which it is), but that it’s for so little gain. Read full review
50
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreAug 14, 2013
That makes Kick Ass 2 more sour than sweet, a movie that jokes about comic book fanboys but stops short of mocking them the way the first film did. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierAug 15, 2013
The meta-satire hits you over the head until not just your Spidey sense is tingling. Read full review
40
The DissolveTasha RobinsonAug 14, 2013
A messy, confused, over-the-top mixture of brutality and sick comedy, puckishness and ugliness, self-awareness and tone-deafness. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 13, 2013
Your ass is constantly braced in readiness and hope, but it remains un-kicked. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 15, 2013
Kick-Ass 2 is an uninspired retread. All too often it plays like a Comic-Con gone insane, with costumed do-gooders taking on costumed criminals in gratuitously vicious battles. Read full review
38
USA TodayClaudia PuigAug 15, 2013
Kick-Ass is a prime example of a movie that never should have bothered with a sequel. Not only is its successor played-out, but it revels in carnage while lacking the visual style and gleeful humor of the original. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaAug 15, 2013
In the annals of sequeldom, Kick-Ass 2 has to be one of the lamest follow-ups ever. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 15, 2013
It's no better, no worse and essentially no different from the jocular, clodhopping brutality of the first one. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 15, 2013
Kick-Ass 2 is a special kind of crap: the kind smart people make for audiences they think are stupid. Read full review
25
Portland OregonianStephen WhittyAug 15, 2013
If it works at all, fitfully, it's because of the precociously talented and in-control Moretz, who carries the film on her own small shoulders. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineChris CabinAug 14, 2013
The film doubles down on the love-hate relationship with ultra-violence that typified its predecessor, but A History of Violence this is not. Read full review
12
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Adam NaymanAug 15, 2013
Arriving at the tail end of blockbuster season, this cheaply produced sequel to the surprise 2011 hit arrives in plenty of time to claim the title of the year’s most unpleasant movie. Read full review
10
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 15, 2013
The writer and director, Jeff Wadlow, can’t obscure the movie’s misogyny, and he also has a tough time staging a scene and selling a joke. His worst offense is that he has no understanding of the power, gravity and terrible beauty of violent imagery, which means he has no grasp of cinema. Read full review
0
RogerEbert.comAli ArikanAug 16, 2013
One of the year's worst films. Read full review
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