It sounds fun in theory, I guess, and there are some entertaining moments of rude irreverence here and there but the giddiness gets a bit tedious after a while. The screenplay by director Matthew Vaughn and longtime collaborator Jane Goldman is kind of like the espionage equivalent of "Scream"—all the characters have seen all the James Bond movies and make frequent reference to their clichés. However, since the Bond movies were never famous for taking themselves seriously, what we have in "Kingsman" is a film making cartoonish jokes about films that were often cartoonish jokes.
Another thing that I found off-putting about "Kingsman," oddly enough, is that it is really, really violent. This may sound like a contradiction of my previously stated desire for a more overtly violent Bond film but Vaughn—whose previous credits include "Kick-Ass," another savagely brutal adaptation of a Mark Millar comic book—floods the screen with flying limbs and spurting blood throughout, and, while it is all done in a deliberately cartoonish and nihilistic manner, it is still way too much of a not-that-great thing.
On the other hand, the scene in which Valentine tests his weapon on a church congregation styled after those Westboro Baptist creeps is really grotesque—the idea of hateful monsters literally destroying each other, to the soundtrack strains of "Free Bird," no less, sounds funny but it goes on for so long and is so brutal (including spearings, shootings and an ax to the throat) that the joke is lost. Meanwhile, the sex is oddly non-existent other than a not-particularly-amusing bit involving a kidnapped Swedish princess offering particular sexual favors to Eggsy in exchange for saving the world and then—Spoiler Alert—making good on her promise.
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