Rating: 1/5 stars

To introduce the issue of “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” it is important to bring up another action sequel from nearly three decades ago, “Lethal Weapon 2.” That film had two things that made it a worthy film to the absolutely wild original: continuation and ambition.

Despite not having a groundbreaking story, the sequel helped develop the friendship of its two main buddy cop characters, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, “Blood Father”) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover, “Extortion”), which included hilarious banter between them written by Shane Black and Jeffrey Boam.

It also dared to have bigger and even more entertaining set pieces than the original, such as a truck pulling an elevated house off its stilts. “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” can be simply defined as both lousy and lazy.

After an entertaining, but awkwardly shot opening scene, Kingsman agent Eggsy (Taron Egerton, “Billionaire Boys Club”) discovers he and Merlin (Mark Strong, “Miss Sloane”) are the only two agents left standing after their headquarters were destroyed.

With nowhere left to turn and their investigation gaining traction, the remaining Kingsman team up with the Statesman, the U.S. division of their secret-agent family headed by agents Champagne (Jeff Bridges, “Hell or High Water”), Tequila (Channing Tatum, Logan Lucky”), and Ginger Ale (Halle Berry, “Kidnap”) to continue their mission, which always comes first. While the deaths of almost all of the Kingsman agents and the destruction of the secret base should be indicative of something more different and dangerous than the original, “The Golden Circle” never does anything interesting with its story.

For one thing, the original was filled with a sense of humor that not only provided great moments, but also related to how different it was trying to be from the James Bond films, which were an obvious inspiration. It was being clever and self-aware without winking at the audience too much.

Here, everything is played straight, there is very little humor present, and many of the jokes that are actually in the film fail to provide any laughs. Poppy Rose’s (Julianne Moore, “Still Alice”) evil plot is so similar to that of Samuel L. Jackson’s Richmond Valentine in the original.

Both plots involve selling a product to everyone in the world (microchips in the original, drugs here) and both plans involve the deaths of millions. The only difference is that killing millions was Valentine’s ultimate goal, while Rose uses the deaths of millions as part of a blackmail for her plan.

Perhaps the worst performance is by Moore. She plays Rose as a constantly perky and enthusiastic middle-aged woman who will not stop trying to sound clever. It reeks of similarity to Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in “Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice,” in which he also plays the character so upbeat and quirky that it does not feel fun, but more like an endurance test.

It does not help that her character is poorly written as a villainess who just wants to be noticed. While Moore gives the worst performance, the most embarrassing one is by Elton John, who spends most of the film as Rose’s captive, playing awful-sounding music and wearing ridiculous costumes.

The drop of quality between the original film and the sequel reaches the same levels of disappointment of situations of a similar caliber, like with Steven Spielberg directing “Jurassic Park” and then the dismal “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.” It would be preferable to say that one can enjoy “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” for a simple, entertaining time at the theater, but the film even fails to deliver on proper action sequences.

Photo provided by 20th Century Fox