Kingsman: The Golden Circle review

Image Courtesy: 20th Century Fox for Kingsman: The Golden Circle

The Good

*Spoilers are ahead*

Julianne Moore’s performance as Poppy

Matthew Vaughn described the inspirations for Poppy as Margaret Thatcher, Martha Stewart, Mrs. Cunningham and Hannibal Lector in a conversation with CinemaBlend. Moore’s performance certainly reflects that. She is delightfully upbeat and fun the entire time, even when things are going poorly for her character.

She always has a smile on her face and the hint of a Southern accent is great.

I enjoyed Samuel L. Jackson’s over the top performance as Valentine in the original Kingsman, but Moore’s Poppy put’s him to shame.

She has a town called Poppy Land, that looks like a town from the Fall Out franchise, she kidnapped Elton John and forces him to perform in costume on stage, she has robot dogs and she forces a man to eat his lifelong friend in the form of a cheeseburger.

I’m here for it.

Eggsy’s impression of Merlin

As he himself put it, “f***ing spectacular”.

It’s only a one scene thing, but I absolutely loved it.

Mark Strong’s rendition of Country Roads in Merlin’s thick Scottish brogue

An incredible moment, it took the tension of an otherwise heartbreaking scene.

Eggsy and Roxy’s relationship

Roxy aka Lancelot (Sophie Cookson) and Eggsy have a ton of chemistry and I was very disappointed when she died.

I appreciate they didn’t go the love triangle route, but I wish they gave Roxy more to do before killing her off.

The fight scenes

Absolutely incredible.

In particular, the scene where Harry attempts to recreate the “Manners maketh man” bar fight from the original, but quickly needs rescuing, is awesome.

Whisky is forced to intervene and let’s just say his whip/lasso combination is not to be underestimated.

I did think Vaughn went a little too heavy with the church scene from the first movie style, but more on that in a bit.

Getting Fox News to pay to get roasted

The US President was a weird Donald Trump/George W. Bush/I don’t even know what replica. It was fine, I’m sure some people will get mad but it was pretty funny to me. Anyway, the President pretends to cooperate with Poppy’s demands to legalize all drugs and to grant her amnesty.

In reality, his plan is to let the degenerates who use Poppy’s illegal drugs all die, hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Anyway, Fox News loves everything the President does and congratulates him for everything. It’s subtle, but I really felt like Kingsman was roasting them a little bit.

Eggsy dating the Swedish Princess

Eggsy must be quite the lover, because, after his rendezvous with Tilde (the Crown Princess of Sweden) at the very end of the first Kingsman, the two have apparently struck up a live-in relationship.

The Crown Princess of Sweden lives in England with her English boyfriend who officially works as a tailor.

She also slums it at birthday parties with Eggsy’s mates, bakes them a cake and makes them some mysterious Swedish Alcohol.

Eggsy is winning at life.

Channing Tatum’s Dancing

Channing Tatum acts like a goofball, do I need to explain this?

Elton John’s role in the finale

Absolutely ridiculous and very funny.