The movie is kinda good. (Predicative - Sounds okay)
It is a kinda good movie. (Attributive - Sounds kinda wrong?)
Why is this so?
There were very few results for "is a kinda good movie" compared to "movie is kinda good". I guessed this was an example of predicative-only adjective like it is mentioned here.
No, it doesn't really work.
"Good" is a very bland adjective that simply means something has other qualities on which you might judge it good. A "good meal" might be judged on taste and presentation, whereas a "good movie" would have very different metrics. So, while you can say something is "good", that just sums up what other attributes it might have.
When you say something is "kinda good" (a shortened way of saying "kind of good"), you're expressing an opinion that it somewhat has the qualities to be called "good". This doesn't quite sound right as an attribute because something either has a quality or it does not. "Kinda good" suggests it may have some desirable attributes but not others, and that's why it doesn't really work as an assigned attribute. If you could define what was good about it (eg good acting) and what was a bad (it was a bit slow) you could say "it is a well-acted movie" and "it is a boring movie".
It is true that there are some common pairings such as "very good" or "fairly good" which work just fine because they imply a sliding scale on which comparable things are measured equally (eg. this film is good, but this other one is very good), but the nature of "kinda/kind of" is to suggest a torn opinion, that you perhaps are struggling to categorise it as good or bad.
