Fun, but not a bit awesome though it is sure trying...really hard!

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2015)

Kingsman (2015)
A huge spy spoof, lots of fun, with all the usual exotic tools and locations. And it includes a spy academy section where recruits perform bizarre and impossible feats.
But not all spoofs are equal. This one is a bit mashed together, ranging from James Bond references (with Colin Firth playing that kind of spy in a suit) to kids being kids (racing cars around or taunting each other like they are in high school). There is a plot, for sure, and Samuel Jackson plays a quirky bad guy with a lisp out to ruin the world via everyone's cell phones.
Things never get slow. Fight scenes are over the top improbable, not in the Jason Bourne way where skill prevails, nor even the James Bond way where cleverness and a couple of gadgets comes to play, but a combination of these with entertaining excess. One woman on prosthetic legs manages to leap, fly, and cut people in half with gymnastic (c.g.i.) aplomb.
The principle character is one of the recruits, played by young British actor Taron Egerton, and for me he lacks screen presence. But we are meant to relate to him, for sure, a troubled kid with immense talent who gets a chance to fix his life by becoming a super spy. OK overall.
Bottom line—a great fun movie for people who already like spy movies. I'd compare it to "Guardians of the Galaxy" but that movie is far better than this one—funnier, better effects, better spoof referencing. "Kingsman" has lots of clever twists, so give it a go. But you might have a feeling along the way that it's all kind of "stupid" and a little disappointing. And you might give the parallel, zanier "Spy" a serious (and non- sexist) try...I liked it a lot.