by George Wolf
KICK-ASS 2
Well, consider the party that was Kick-Ass officially pooped upon.
It’s too bad, because three years ago that film emerged as a violent blast of tongue in cheek fun. This time around, Kick-Ass 2 provides plenty of violence, but the tongue is far from the cheek, leaving fun in very short supply.
The heroic duo of “Kick-Ass” Dave (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and “Hit-Girl” Mindy (Chloe Grace Moretz) is back, joined in crime fighting by a group of other homemade heroes, including Colonel Stars and Stripes (an uber-macho Jim Carrey).
In response, Kick-Ass’s friend-turned-foe Chris/”Red Mist,” (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) rebrands himself as super villain “The Motherfucker.” Hungry to take revenge on Kick-Ass for killing his father, The MFer recruits a team of super evil friends to take on the do- gooders.
Director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down) just doesn’t seem to understand what made the original Kick-Ass so appealing. As violent as it was, it was never mean-spirited, but K-A2 is permeated by a nasty streak that meanders between uncomfortable and downright distasteful. Regardless of what they did or didn’t do in the source comic book, a film is a different animal, and this one is not at all playful.
Jim Carrey made headlines by refusing to promote K-A2, apparently moved by the Sandy Hook shootings to reconsider the film’s tone. You can see now he has a point, though it’s a bit curious why it wasn’t apparent from the start.
Taylor-Johnson and Moretz are effective, both still able to showcase some sweet vulnerability in their respective characters. The script saddles Moretz with the tougher assignment, as Hit-Girl struggles with the transition from sidekick to major player.
The framed picture she keeps of “Big Daddy” (Nicolas Cage) provides a sobering reminder of how much he’s missed in part two. Cage’s hilarious Adam West parody kept the original Kick-Ass grounded in smart mischief, while the new installment plays it much too straight.
The kicking of asses was never the point of Kick-Ass, a point that’s obviously lost on Kick-Ass 2.
Dammit.
THE BUTLER
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Audre Lorde said this in 1984 to propose that those seeking equality stop using the tools of the white, patriarchal society to effect change. Lee Daniels challenges Ms. Lorde’s assertion on a number of levels with his new film, The Butler.
A perusal of Daniels’s work suggests an intriguing if heavy-handed director. He’s drawn to provocative stories, but tales that might otherwise feel subversive tend to spring from Daniels’s camera a little pulpy, a tad melodramatic, sometimes even lurid. His greatest strength to date has been in casting. His second has been in eliciting revelatory performances from those casts. But understated, he will never be.
His latest effort suggests Daniels has leveraged the creditability he earned with Precious (and nearly lost with The Paperboy) to make the leap to Important Hollywood Movies.
How Important and Hollywood? Oprah stars.
This well-stocked cast populates a yarn about a White House butler (Forest Whitaker) who watched his father shot to death in a cotton field and witnessed 8 different presidents and the social upheaval of eight administrations before finally casting a ballot for his country’s first black president.
Cue the strings.
And yes, Daniels employs all the tricks of the trade for his generational eye-witness tale of historical change: era-appropriate clothing and hairstyles, a personal involvement in every major historical event, old people make up.
How he uses these items, however, suggests a slyer filmmaker than some might predict. Yes, his story is of a man who embraced a society-approved role as butler, and in being a good man in the right place, was able to impact cultural decisions. That is, he used the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
Meanwhile Daniels uses the imposing score, slick production values and predictable structure of J. Edgar and other historically sweeping dramas to look at how the slow movement of systemic racism affected one black family. What he didn’t examine was how their noble suffering moved one white man to action (for that you can see Blood Diamond, Glory, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Blind Side, The Help, and basically every other big budget film on the topic.)
Add to that his cagey casting. Some intriguing and generally successful choices: John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson, and Alan Rickman, sublime as Ronald Reagan. And how ingenious is it to hire Jane Fonda to play Nancy Reagan? Speaks volumes without saying a word, doesn’t it?
The whole affair offers a crafty playfulness hidden by the gloss of the packaging. Is The Butler a self-important, melodramatic tear jerker? Oh, hell yes. But it’s a real surprise as well.
Check out more of my reviews at MaddWolf.com!