Based on the comic created by writer Mark Millar (Wanted), Kick-Ass is far from your standard superhero film.  If anything, it takes the tropes which we’ve seen in similar films over the past decade, and turns them directly on their head.

The tale of teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a comic reading geek who decides one day to do the unthinkable and actually become a superhero, is a Spider-Man style tale of a nerdy everybody who tries to become a hero. Unlike Peter Parker, however, Dave fails. Constantly.  After an ill-fated run-in with neighborhood thugs, Lizewski’s antics become a YouTube sensation, quickly mixing him up in a world of other like minded superhero wannabees, and putting him on the wrong side of the mob.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Stardust), Kick-Ass is an absolute blast of a film, mixing elements of Spider-Man, Superbad and Kill Bill vol. 1 with gleeful, gory abandon. The true highlights of the film are Big Daddy (a hammy Nic Cage channeling Adam West) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz, best known as the Yoda-esq little sister in 500 Days of Summer), a Batman style vigilante and his 11 year old daughter/katana wielding sidekick - they steal every scene they’re in, and ultimately, I wished the movie was focused more on them. Honestly, if you’re not blown away when you see Hit Girl take out dozens of nameless thugs, you need to check your pulse - you may be dead. And as much as I liked his role, as the Red Mist or not, Christopher Mintz-Plasse can’t avoid being McLovin, even in spandex.  Special credit goes to Clark Duke, starring as one of Dave’s fellow comic nerds, who almost always delivers a great line when he appears on screen.

If you’re a big fan of the source material, I can certainly see where one would take issue, as there are some notable changes from panel to screen, but the adaptation is mostly faithful.  Some of the changes are for the better, but there are other times where you feel the Hollywood touch, so to say.

Any way you cut it, Kick-Ass lives up to it’s title and provides one heck of an evening at the cinema.  Here in Maryland, it’s been feeling like summer, and Kick-Ass is the perfect movie for this not-quite-Summer season.  Get into the theaters this Friday, strap in, and get ready for a blast.