Kick-Ass

Starring: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn (“Stardust”)
Written by: Matthew Vaughn (“Stardust”) and Jane Goldman (“Stardust”)

When did it all of a sudden become cool again to rip off from Quentin Tarantino? When filmmakers were doing it back in the late 90s, everyone scoffed. Now, they just slap “Tarantinoesque” on it and praise it for its stylized violence. While “Kick-Ass” boasts some of the same campiness as “Kill Bill,” it’s not nearly as fun. Besides the scenes where Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) goes medieval on the bad guys, there is not much behind the rather dull story about a geeky high school kid (Aaron Johnson) who becomes a wanna-be superhero. This should have been a movie about Hit Girl and her father (Nicholas Cage). Instead, the script devotes most of its time to the most uninteresting characters of the bunch.