Metacritic reviews

The most welcome change is the tone. Wadlow has decided he's making a straight-up comedy, and he demonstrates a knack for it.

The film delivers almost exactly what fans of the first installment are hoping for.

The best thing about ‘Kick-Ass’ was Moretz, and Hit-Girl still gets the best lines. Like the first film, Kick-Ass 2 pulls the reality of teen life into its fantasy.

A more modest success than the first "Kick-Ass," but still of-a-piece with its scurrilous predecessor. Nobody flies a jet-pack up a skyscraper this time, but Kick-Ass 2 still has its share of over-the-top action, and the sweary laughs are just about intact.

A fun if sporadically schizoid return to one of the brighter, brasher comic-bookers of recent years.

As diverting as this action-packed caper often is, it feels not just weightless but emotionally and morally stunted whenever it veers into grown-up dramatic territory.

That makes Kick Ass 2 more sour than sweet, a movie that jokes about comic book fanboys but stops short of mocking them the way the first film did.

The crime isn’t that Kick-Ass 2 is vulgar (which it is), but that it’s for so little gain.

Your ass is constantly braced in readiness and hope, but it remains un-kicked.

The film doubles down on the love-hate relationship with ultra-violence that typified its predecessor, but A History of Violence this is not.