Kick-Ass 2 (Jeff Wadlow, 2013)

It is not a good idea to presume that setting your stall out as a superhero spoof gives you the licence to try to milk a franchise out of it yourself. Doubly so when all the wit goes out of the window at the same time: love or hate the first instalment, it had pizzazz and a guilty discomfiting sense of pleasure at having a little girl carve her way through hordes of thugs. This, however, is just hopelessly bereft of new ideas, and has to resort to even higher levels, if that were possible, of dumb violence and gross-out toilet humour. It's not a good sign when you start missing Nicolas Cage's pontificating solemnity from the last time around.

3/10