My best guess is that 2:HRS is targeted squarely at whatever the British equivalent of American junior high school students would be. There's no overt denigration intended; it's just that it's themes and plot line and action-notes are unequivocally youth-targeted. In fact so much so that adults might have a bit of difficulty enjoying it.
As examples, themes and subject matter include: kissing your first girl, operating a motorcycle for the first time, outmaneuvering an evil scientist, a clique of friends carefully calculated to cover nearly every common locale-specific ethnic variant and character stereotype in only 3 characters, "bumbling" henchmen reeking of a Laurel and Hardy patina easily outmaneuvered by clever and "with it" teenagers and performing various pratfalls and face plants, family dynamic problems and coming-of-age-issues driven by the early loss of the dad, vacillation between victimizing and maudlin sentiment over a little sister, "painful" morality lessons learned through experience-driven "hardships" during the course of the movie, and blah blah blah on and on and on.
Basically, apply a youth-issue-themed stereotypes cookie-cutter and stamp stamp stamp. One youth movie while you wait.
2:HRS "controversial" content tops out with spray paint tagging and then dilutes even that with implication that the main character's motivations are genuinely artistic even to the point of disparaging the "art" in an art gallery so that the main character can tag over it and obviously improve it. Even the so-called artist whose work gets tagged over tacitly confirms the greater value of the tag by upping the associated price tag for the piece by tens of thousands of dollars. Why, it wasn't clear vandalism... it was altruistic civil improvement.
Did I enjoy 2:HRS? Not in the least. It was far too simplistic, banal and predictable for me. Which doesn't actually say anything because I am so far out of its target audience that my lack of enjoyment of it is all but irrelevant.
So why did I give it an 8/10 stars? Because I rate movies on a relative scale tied directly to how close a movie came to being the movie it intended to be. 2:HRS is a juvenile movie featuring exclusively juvenile themes intended for a juvenile audience with decidedly juvenile tastes. Almost certainly this is exactly the movie that 2:HRS intended to be. Its not it's fault that I never should've watched it. Therefore, by my system, 8/10 even if it did bring up my lunch. Completely subjective I know, but there you have it.
As examples, themes and subject matter include: kissing your first girl, operating a motorcycle for the first time, outmaneuvering an evil scientist, a clique of friends carefully calculated to cover nearly every common locale-specific ethnic variant and character stereotype in only 3 characters, "bumbling" henchmen reeking of a Laurel and Hardy patina easily outmaneuvered by clever and "with it" teenagers and performing various pratfalls and face plants, family dynamic problems and coming-of-age-issues driven by the early loss of the dad, vacillation between victimizing and maudlin sentiment over a little sister, "painful" morality lessons learned through experience-driven "hardships" during the course of the movie, and blah blah blah on and on and on.
Basically, apply a youth-issue-themed stereotypes cookie-cutter and stamp stamp stamp. One youth movie while you wait.
2:HRS "controversial" content tops out with spray paint tagging and then dilutes even that with implication that the main character's motivations are genuinely artistic even to the point of disparaging the "art" in an art gallery so that the main character can tag over it and obviously improve it. Even the so-called artist whose work gets tagged over tacitly confirms the greater value of the tag by upping the associated price tag for the piece by tens of thousands of dollars. Why, it wasn't clear vandalism... it was altruistic civil improvement.
Did I enjoy 2:HRS? Not in the least. It was far too simplistic, banal and predictable for me. Which doesn't actually say anything because I am so far out of its target audience that my lack of enjoyment of it is all but irrelevant.
So why did I give it an 8/10 stars? Because I rate movies on a relative scale tied directly to how close a movie came to being the movie it intended to be. 2:HRS is a juvenile movie featuring exclusively juvenile themes intended for a juvenile audience with decidedly juvenile tastes. Almost certainly this is exactly the movie that 2:HRS intended to be. Its not it's fault that I never should've watched it. Therefore, by my system, 8/10 even if it did bring up my lunch. Completely subjective I know, but there you have it.