This got added to Apple+ in the UK yesterday, and I've got that on a three-month free offer at the moment so I thought I'd give it a shot.
It was reasonably entertaining, a 6/10, 3/5, B- kind of deal if I was going to quantify it. Not as original or unusual as might have been expected from the somewhat enigmatic marketing campaign; kind of a mix of the director's own Kingsman movies, Romancing the Stone and...one other movie from the mid-90s I won't name lest it spoil one of the main twists. I guess younger audiences won't have seen those older movies, although they might have seen The Lost City from a couple of years ago, which also cribbed from Romancing the Stone. Still it kept me entertained and Bryce Dallas Howard is good as an unconventional action movie lead.
I do think Matthew Vaughm has been working from a particular bag of tricks since Kick-Ass a decade and a half ago and it's kind of become a bit dated and probably a bit alien for younger audiences, and for older audiences its lost or losing its charm for a lot of people (me a little slower than most, given that I thought this was OK and liked The King's Man quite a bit). There are a couple of fairly obvious attempts to do a PG-13 version of the Suffragette City scene from the first Kingsman and they're cute but not that memorable or exciting.
An awful lot of people killed by the heroes in this PG-13 film incidentally, even if it cuts away just before it gets graphic. I guess I'm getting a little more sensitive about those things as I get older (or sadly, as the times have moved on).
In addition to getting largely poor reviews and a weak C+ Cinemascore, this flopped pretty spectacularly in cinemas relative to its budget ($96million worldwide against $200million) so I'm guessing any sequels or even the crossover movie hinted at in the mid-credits scene are unlikely to happen, but given the baffling economics streaming services run on, who knows? I would give a theoretical sequel a look under similar circumstances, I guess.
It was reasonably entertaining, a 6/10, 3/5, B- kind of deal if I was going to quantify it. Not as original or unusual as might have been expected from the somewhat enigmatic marketing campaign; kind of a mix of the director's own Kingsman movies, Romancing the Stone and...one other movie from the mid-90s I won't name lest it spoil one of the main twists. I guess younger audiences won't have seen those older movies, although they might have seen The Lost City from a couple of years ago, which also cribbed from Romancing the Stone. Still it kept me entertained and Bryce Dallas Howard is good as an unconventional action movie lead.
I do think Matthew Vaughm has been working from a particular bag of tricks since Kick-Ass a decade and a half ago and it's kind of become a bit dated and probably a bit alien for younger audiences, and for older audiences its lost or losing its charm for a lot of people (me a little slower than most, given that I thought this was OK and liked The King's Man quite a bit). There are a couple of fairly obvious attempts to do a PG-13 version of the Suffragette City scene from the first Kingsman and they're cute but not that memorable or exciting.
An awful lot of people killed by the heroes in this PG-13 film incidentally, even if it cuts away just before it gets graphic. I guess I'm getting a little more sensitive about those things as I get older (or sadly, as the times have moved on).
In addition to getting largely poor reviews and a weak C+ Cinemascore, this flopped pretty spectacularly in cinemas relative to its budget ($96million worldwide against $200million) so I'm guessing any sequels or even the crossover movie hinted at in the mid-credits scene are unlikely to happen, but given the baffling economics streaming services run on, who knows? I would give a theoretical sequel a look under similar circumstances, I guess.
