Kick-Ass falls flat

What defines a hero? A police officer? A superhero in a comic book? Or a teenager putting on a superhero costume and patrolling the streets after school?

Kick-Ass and Hit Girl return, three years older but still in high school. When Hit Girl is grounded by her guardian because he wants her to live like a normal teenager, Kick-Ass joins the superhero alliance "Justice Forever", and just in time, too, because the city's supervillains are teaming up under the leadership of a superhero turned superfiend: the self-appointed "Motherfucker". 

Kick-Ass 2 fails to hold up against its 2010 precursor. The storyline is your basic "good guys fight bad guys, good guys win" stereotypical action movie plot, further undermined by mediocre jock comedy. A pity, since the diverse characters, especially the Motherfucker – a short, skinny high school student wearing eyeliner and a costume made with his mother's BDSM paraphernalia – have more than enough potential to make for an exceptionally funny film. The sub-plot of Hit Girl's struggle with the high school's queen bee is slightly more ironically entertaining but doesn't exactly fire any big guns at the obsessions of today's youth culture. 

But guess what? After all that bashing in of heads the film ends with a lesson! Real heroes are not guys in neoprene suits trying to save the world but real people living real lives. 

Kick-Ass 2 | Directed by Jeff Wadlow (USA 2013) With Chloë Grace Moretz, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jim Carrey, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Starts August 15