Reviews

The Little Mermaid II is honestly turning into one of my favourite movies in a very serious way. There are too many abominable reviews of it out there and I've been meaning to try and redress the balance for a long time, especially since it hit blu-ray where it looks astonishingly better than it ever has. The story seems similar to the first movie on the surface - Ariel's daughter Melody wants to be a mermaid, like Ariel wanted to be human, but Ariel fears the dangers of the sea, like her father feared humans; particularly Morgana, sister of Ursula, the octopus witch of the original. But the way this is framed is important. Perhaps the reason Melody is drawn to the sea is that her parents, after the first hint of a threat from Morgana, built a giant wall separating land from sea - the very union that was the resolution of the first movie. We're drawn to the mysterious, that which we're told is forbidden - some of us, least - and Melody and Ariel are absolutely this kind of person, but they don't realise how alike they are. This is a movie about the need to label and divide passing from generation to generation and being considered okay as long as it's called something else, and - ironically - dividing us even more.

It's Melody's 12th birthday and just like Ariel at 16 she's not really au fait with such occasions, preferring to frolic beyond the forbidden wall with Sebastian the crab (okay, they don't explain why she's okay with the fact he can speak yet doesn't question the rest of her parents' bullsh*t lol… but hey I guess it's what you get used to that you believe…), exploring the ocean. After her party goes awry (a bit of slapstick with the old French chef from the first movie), there's a scene that resonated particularly strong for me on this viewing after some personal stuff this past weekend. Ariel tries to comfort Melody, making what to the audience is just a bad joke but when you actually think about it is actually incredibly cruel - "I was a regular fish out of water," she says, and follows up by saying, "you can tell me anything" which we know simply isn't true, and she should too, having hidden that statue etc from her father 12 years previously.

So it's understandable and actually a little exciting when Melody not only runs away, like Ariel did in the first movie, makes a deal with Ursula's sister and becomes a mermaid, but also then steals her grandfather's trident for the new witch. The fact is this family hasn't learned their own lesson yet, and it's exhilarating to see this little girl sticking it to them. Repetition is a form of insanity - this movie isn't recycling a story for the sake of making a little more money, it's actually using that cliché to say something about the fact we do this ourselves every day.

There is a simply incredible scene at the end of this movie. Ursula's sister is defeated in a similar fashion (a little rushed and easy if you ask me, but it's not exactly crucial to the reason I love the movie). King Triton tells his granddaughter Melody, "I don't blame you for wanting to join us merfolk…" (in the same condescending tone Ariel said "You can tell me anything…" if you ask me) and he gives her a choice - same as it seemed the rules were in the first movie - she can be a mermaid or a human, he'll wave his trident and make it so.

"I have a better idea," Melody says, and in the next shot, she holding the trident, breaks down the effing wall.

I've been going through a whole kind of self-analysis thing, well, most of my life, but particularly recently about gender binary, identity, the way these things pass down through generations, the way people do things because they feel it's what they're supposed to do, because who of us really knows better etc. But I'm focussing too much on my own obsessions. On the most basic level this movie is about absolutism in all its forms - any system that says there are only two choices and that one is right and one is wrong. The wall erected between land and sea is the wall between any two extremes you feel are pulling you to choose between, when you actually feel like you lie somewhere between and they both have their good and bad points. There are assholes and angels in both mer and human kingdoms and the wider you cast your net the more angelfish you're gonna catch (sorry that was awful lol). I really think this aspect of this movie has been severely overlooked - it might be the best message I've seen in any Disney movie. But still, really, as per my initial response, it had me at Melody and the incredible song "For a Moment"… for those two elements alone, it is worth it. If you haven't seen it yet, see it - if you have seen it, please… watch it again

There's a scene in Kick-Ass 2 where one of Dave's only friends who hasn't quite got into the whole "real life superheroes" act yet finally joins them in an outfit that is basically an inversion of Dave's yellow-and-green jumpsuit and tries to choose his name. All he can come up with is variations like "Ass Kick!" and "The Asskicker" to which Dave and his other friend understandably roll their eyes. He later changes sides completely.

Remember that awful movie that the Daily Mail reviewed and accidentally called Kick-Ass? That's what Kick-Ass 2 is really a sequel to. It's so much a pale interpretation of what some terrible people thought the first movie was (and I'm afraid one of those people may be the series' creator, Mark Millar, who quite famously reads the Daily Mail) that it may as well be titled one of those awful unimaginative names Dave's friends comes up with.

I was actually fine with the awful clangers early on in this movie… the Austin Powers-esque, "she sure had some big guns" followed by a shot of someone carrying some actual big guns towards the camera, the blatant descriptive gags like "his baton is so much bigger than Kick-Ass's… baton means cock, by the way…"… the desperate attempts to be current with Mother F**ker spouting his plans to basically tear the world down and then saying, "I gotta tweet about this!"

I could deal with all this because I didn't expect much from this movie except for Hit Girl to be awesome. I really thought they couldn't mess that up because she's such an indestructible character. There's an early line where she tells her foster father, "I've done more in 15 years of my life than most adults have done in all of theirs," and it should ring hard for anyone over 30. Even part of the sequence I'm about to talk about gives a fine glimpse of what Chloe Moretz's Carrie might be like – in short, it might work, she shows the kind of vulnerability I didn't ever expect to see in such a face – a face that, if I described honestly, I'd probably be taken in by Yewtree…

But it's in that middle sequence, the bulk of Moretz's strangely short screen time (she was the highlight of the first movie and even the negative reviews of this one single her out – I'm afraid I can't even be that generous), where this movie really lost me entirely. It begins as a strange Mean Girls knock-off with Mindy (Hit Girl) quite inexplicably going along with a plan to make her "like other girls", passing through a strange slumber party scene where she basically gets horny for the first time watching a "Union J" video (I was surprised to find this cheesy looking band, looking as fake as everything else in this movie, is actually real – and Chloe Moretz is a fan, forcing me to assume it's her doing…), and proceeding to a clichéd looking jock taking her on her first date (her foster father, so protective, seems to be fine with this) that for a horrible second I thought was going to lead into some kind of rape (I forget if the other "rape" scene happens before or after this – I'm not even gonna talk about that 'cos it's been mentioned plenty elsewhere). Instead she is met by her fellow school pals and then deserted. HURTFUL! This whole middle act story ends with Mindy strolling into school dressed like all the other shallow girls and prodding them with an invention of Big Daddy from the first movie – a stick that makes them throw up and diarrhoea at the same time, which looks more like vanilla and chocolate pudding coming out of both ends. It was at this point that if you'd photographed me you'd have seen a face that looked a little like when Eric Cartman's funny bone broke in "South Park".

It's not that I'm offended by this stuff. If you know me, you know this. And I knew that under any other circumstance I would've found it tear-inducingly funny. There was just something about the way it was done, and the context, that kind of paralysed me. It was just so … pointless.

Jim Carrey disowned this movie because of the violence after Sandy Hook etc. He'd've done better just saying he was embarrassed at how it turned out. I heard there was a post-credits scene at the end of Kick-Ass 2, but I left as soon as the screen went black and I wished for once I was the kind of person who leaves earlier sometimes. Frankly unless that post-credits scene was Ashton Kutcher saying "you've been punk'd!", I think at least I saved some of my time the day I saw this. It's not offensive, it's just embarrassing. The only good thing is that it'll make you realise just how classy the first movie was. Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, you are sorely missed