I can't for the life of me figure out why this movie is called Kick-Ass. I mean, that's how it gets started. A scrawny little wiener has an operation that makes him resistant to pain, and he becomes an internet sensation when a crime he stops is caught on tape.

This spawns a father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz, a great young actress) team, inspired by Kick-Ass, who actually know what they're doing and are much more vindictive, killing everyone in their path.

Here's the thing: although Kick-Ass gets the most screen time, he's just an observer for most of this movie. The father and daughter have a much better motive to beat the bad guys, they're cooler, they're smarter, and the girl (who's about 11-13) is so badass she ends up getting all the best action scenes. Kick-Ass has a tacked-on love story that doesn't make much sense nor is it particularly funny, and he makes just one addition to the final battle after Hit Girl does all the work.

I get that the screenwriter wanted to sell this script with the logline of "an everyday douchebag wants to be a superhero, so he fakes it," but he clearly didn't think it was a very interesting story. Why didn't he just rewrite the thing with a focus on Hit Girl? As it is, the movie slows down every time the lead character is onscreen. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

This is actually a better-than-average zombie-style movie (it's more like the "rage" that infests the characters in 28 Days Later, but it's the same idea), but late in the movie, either the screenwriter or director can't help a cliche or two.

The sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his wife (Radha Mitchell) are the only survivors left in town. Everyone else is either dead or one of the crazies, and the military has been brought in to burn the town to the ground, so they're just as much the "bad guys" in this film as the crazies, if not more so.

To this point, the sheriff and his wife have survived because they've spent every second together. Olyphant went through hell to reconnect with his wife initially and has been by her side ever since.

However, near the end, Olyphant goes into a building, and instructs his wife, "Stay right here. Don't move." Then he goes inside.

Wait...what?!

There is no benefit to splitting up now, after all this time. It gets the two split up, which does a great job of building tension, but the fact that they do it of their own volition makes absolutely no sense. To compound the idiocy of the scene, while alone, the wife hears a creak, and she goes to investigate. There is no possible good outcome of this investigation, but she goes toward it, rather than running to her husband. The whole scene is a tour de force of laziness on the part of the filmmakers, who otherwise did a pretty decent job.