Kick-Ass Lives Up to Its Name

Teen superhero movie Kick-Ass is an over-the-top violent, funny, and subversive take on the genre that more than lives up to its name, say critics, many of whom make Tarantino comparisons.

• Director Matthew Vaughn's movie "soars on its central idea of matching a superhero's exploits with the grinding reality of urban teen life," writes Richard Corliss at Time.

• The Marvel Comics adaptation "has punk energy, ace action moves, and a winning sense of absurdist fun," Steven Rea writes at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• Joe Williams at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hasn't bought a comic book since the Johnson administration, but still loved Kick-Ass, "the most brazenly funny bloodbath unleashed on the public since Pulp Fiction."
• Karina Longworth at the Village Voice wasn't so impressed. "Never as shocking as it thinks it is, as funny as it should be, or as engaged in cultural critique as it could be, Kick-Ass is half-assed," she writes.

(More Kick-Ass reviews stories.)