"Brilliant, outrageous, deliriously entertaining", and, "an ultra-violent cinematic rush". That was just some of the praise heaped on the 2010 film Kick-Ass, an action comedy about an ordinary teenager who dons a home-made ninja costume and becomes a crime-fighting superhero.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust) and based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar, it was a fresh, funny and grotesquely violent movie, and one of the best over-the-top flicks of that year. Heck, even Nicolas Cage was fun to watch.
In Jeff Wadlow's follow-up, (HBO, Saturday at 10pm), Aaron Taylor-Johnson once again plays Dave Lizewski, the geeky high-schooler who masquerades as the superpower-less Kick-Ass, now desperately trying to convince former comrade Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) to continue their battle against evil.
Under pressure from her strict guardian, Hit Girl is forced to hang up her crime-fighting cape and battle the peer pressure of bitchy classmates while our titular masked hero teams up with Justice Forever, a small group of costumed do-gooders led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey; The Truman Show).
But every superhero film needs a baddie. Enter Red Mist (above; Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Fright Night), who has reinvented himself as leather-clad supervillain The Motherf**ker. He blames Kick-Ass for the death of his father and is out to seek revenge.
Unfortunately, whereas the original film charmed us with its satirical look at the relationship between real-life and comic-book violence, the sequel finds its humour in lame, almost Carry On-esque double entendres. It's not clear whether the producers want us to laugh or cringe at the gruesome violence.