A bit of a disappointment. I spent the first half an hour thinking this film had potential to become one of my favourite spy action flicks, but ended feeling completely the opposite - it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. There were plenty of gems: I loved the Kingsman tailor setup, the focus on exploring the struggles of Eggsy's working class community, the self-aware tributes to spy movies, the clever lines, the elitism of the Kingsman recruits, the wackiness of the villain's character. I even enjoyed the crazy violent humour of people's heads exploding in fireworks and crowds fighting each other to raucous music. There was a lot of uniqueness and edge in this film.

However, there were so many weaknesses that killed the film for me. The premise is a bit weak - an independent spy agency with so few agents, funded by heirless rich people? Seems unlikely. The villain's motives and plans also felt a bit trite. Character development fell through - how are we supposed to believe that a boy who couldn't kill a pug reacts to his mass killing of people by going to have a fun time with a Scandinavian princess, without a hint of shock or self-disgust? The treatment of female characters was awful - we have a weird evil agent without a backstory, Eggsy's dysfunctional mum, a Kings(wo)man who always looks worried, and a Scandinavian princess who starts off noble but at the end behaves in a way that completely contradicts her character. For someone who was portrayed earlier as upright and caring deeply about human lives, the way she behaves at the end is just strange and inconsistent.

The film starts with a heart, but ends as a joke. It felt as though the main point was to produce a 'cool' spy movie, not a 'great' one.

To me this is a film about liberation - liberation from the grip of popular narratives of romance and self, giving way for the rise of the truly authentic self and experience of romance. I thought the most powerful scene in the film was the one in which Tom rages at the manipulativeness of the greeting card company in telling people how to feel, playing into and reinforcing popular narratives of self or romance, instead of letting people express themselves. The spiel channels Tom's rage at being deceived and marks the starting point for his emotional 'rebirth' of a mature authentic self. Up to that point, Tom has been utterly delusional, fitting Summer into his own preconceived ideas of romance as fed to him by popular media; in turn, Summer thoughtlessly plays with his feelings instead of considering the effect her actions truly have on him. The title conveys a brief, intense summer romance which is quickly over and gives way to a more mature 'autumn' of relationships - for both of them.