"Why so unserious?" To intentionally butcher a line from The Dark Knight, that is the question that I wondered as I watched Kick-Ass, a sick-puppy revenge fantasy adapted from Mark Millar’s comic book series. Why such a gleeful depiction of cold-blooded murder? Why a fixation on seeing human bodies completely ripped apart and destroyed, all told with a wink and a self-amused chuckle? Starting with the first scene in which a man dressed as superhero attempts in vain to fly only to plummet headfirst into a taxicab instantly killing him, director Matthew Vaughn plays death after death for laughs. The voice of the main character quickly reassures us in a humorous manner that it wasn’t him lifeless sticking out of the car, but in fact “some Armenian guy with a history of mental problems.” Cause, you know, if he was in good mental health and of an ethnicity other than Armenian that could potentially prompt alarm.

That reassuring voice belongs to Dave Lizewski, a gawky teenager who passes his time fantasizing about his big-breasted English teacher and devouring comic books (he’s played by 19-year-old English actor Aaron Johnson). As an escape from the stifling frustration of being a horny kid invisible to the girls at his high school, and because he and his friends constantly get kicked around by local thugs, Dave dreams up the idea of doing what nobody has ever legitimately attempted: becoming a superhero. The lift-off is rough. His first fight-trying to thwart two car thieves who laugh at him for his silly hero attire doesn’t go according to plan. Between the knife wound to the stomach and the random car that knocks him clear off his feet, it’s fair to say that he loses badly. But after recovering from a three-week hospital hiatus, he emerges with newfound strength and determination. Intervening in a local gang fight he holds his own and becomes a huge sensation on YouTube when a random kid captures the whole brawl on a cellphone camera.

What Dave doesn’t know is that while he is flexing his superhero muscles, a father (a stammering, sporadically amusing Nicolas Cage) and daughter team is dressing up in flamboyant hero costumes and slaughtering everyone who works for the city’s biggest crime boss, Frank D’Amico (played by Mark Strong). Their paths cross when Kick-Ass, acting on behalf of his school crush Katie, challenges a local drug dealer who had been harassing her. In a stroke of déjà vu, he’s in again way over his head and is only spared death by the sudden intervention of Hit-Girl, a seemingly sweet ordinary eleven-year-old girl decked out in a purple wig and armed to kill (played by the terrifically promising Chloë Moretz). And kill she does. Under the guidance of her father (hands down the worst movie dad this side of Precious) who fights in a Batman costume and goes by the name “Big Daddy,” she ruthlessly and viciously murders every bad guy in the room. The problem is that these dealers and criminals happen to work for D’Amico and along with other destruction of his property and other executions of his men committed by Big Daddy and Hit Girl, D’Amico is determined to bring them all down and gets help in that when his restless son pretends to be a superhero named Red Mist in order to trick the crime-fighting trio (Christopher Mintz-Plasse fully realizing the pouty meanness he’s hinted at in previous parts).

With depictions of violence in the movies it’s not simply a matter of how graphic or severe, the context and nature of bloodshed is very critical too. The idea of actually showing or even insinuating the murder of children is repulsive. It’s a line that if crossed requires strict scrutiny. For example, “Born Free,” the latest music video from M.I.A, a provocative nine-minute statement on apartheid and ethnic cleansing that’s been effectively banned from YouTube, ends with the image of redheaded children being shot in the head and blown to smithereens. It’s unquestionably eyebrow-raising, but it is artistically justified-I think-because of the video’s urgent message (and as social commentary it puts anything in say, District 9 to shame). It’s simply one of the most disturbingly powerful music videos ever made. With Kick-Ass the sheer moral revulsion of seeing murdered children is inverted into something equally problematic and without the defense of social statement: the murder of adults by children. This is a realm that even in fantasy kids shouldn’t be dragged into, making the sight of a young girl and teenage boy killing viciously-often without necessity-becomes nauseating (and naturally that means watching villains in retaliation trying to kill and beating up kids). I left the movie feeling sick, mistreated, and puzzled as to why the death of Kick-Ass’s mom by sudden aneurysm and later the literal explosion of a thug in a microwave should be taken as comedy.

There can be a morbid, ironic humor in death as anyone who’s seen anything made by Joel and Ethan Coen can attest. Kick-Ass doesn’t find that sweet spot. The real trouble though is that even for the comic book geeks who gobble this sort of stuff up the violence isn’t even particularly interesting. You’ll rapidly lose count of how many throats Hit-Girl stabs or brains she liberates with her handgun from the tyranny of their skulls. None of the carnage comes anywhere near the visceral power and astonishment of the best executed cinematic violence (personally I kept thinking about the “wow!” moment in The Proposition when Guy Pearce’s character blows the head of a hostile stranger clear off and lamenting how much this falls short). It’s an overdose of style; just fast and choppy work somewhere on the action scale between the brilliance of Paul Greengrass and the incompetence of Michael Bay. It quickly works against the movie by stamping out any suspense. Oh sure, the occasional obstacle emerges but when you’ve just seen two characters wipe out thirty men, it’s a safe bet they’ll eventually annihilate thirty more.

If you saw The Incredibles it’s hard to think of what you would gain from watching Kick-Ass. This strives for the same element of “what if?” plausibility as Pixar’s wonderful take on the superhero fantasy but misses. Actually, it just sticks the movie in a weird bind. On the one hand it wants to convincingly sell the smaller details like Kick-Ass setting up a MySpace page, being rapidly hospitalized on his first try, and being a social outcast in the real world, while on the other selling us deadening, over-the-top action and telling us that it’s okay to laugh because none of this is real anyway. But the elements of “realism” serves to make the violence all the crueler: bloodshed on this level needed the complete non-reality, obviously synthetic world of a Kill Bill or even a 007 movie to make it palatable.

Kick-Ass is a sadistic movie devoid of feeling and constructed from eighth-rate parts. It's also a huge step backward for Vaughn whose last movie, the meandering Stardust, was at least well intentioned. The drama is perfunctory at best and thoroughly uninteresting. Even as I understood why Dave decided to try becoming a superhero I don’t really feel it or care, it just felt like careless quick steps to get the plot in gear. Writers Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman work in a back-story for Big Daddy (presumably faithful to the original comic book series) in which he was once a cop who was framed by Frank D’Amico and sent to jail while his wife gave birth to Mindy. None of that character history provides anything like real insight into their ruthless and plainly disproportionate violence. Vaughn and Goldman even manage to incorporate a side story in which Katie thinks Dave is gay so she lets him hang around, watching Ugly Betty, painting nails and getting naked in front of him. It’s downright insulting to character and audience alike. Most glaringly, Vaughn lacks the courage of his own convictions in the casting of Kick-Ass, a character who is supposed to be a social misfit and a nerd. Aaron Johnson doesn’t bring any real rooting interest to the character in no small part because he’s miscast. He doesn’t look like a nerd, he has the face of a jock or a campus hot-shot and what the role really needed was someone with the presence and nerdish empathy of Michael Cera.

Last summer I got bloody satisfaction watching the Nazis burnt to a crisp in Inglourious Basterds, but that was because Tarantino is a masterful director and I knew what bad deeds the villains had committed. It’s hard to cheer at the sight of person after person after person slaughtered when their crimes are mostly unclear. I was never really sure precisely what D’Amico’s crime network was up to beyond drug deals and strolling around the city like thugs which made it tiring and morally dubious to even try rooting for nutty vigilante characters who seemed, if anything, more unbalanced and vicious than their enemies. Kick-Ass isn’t anywhere near as clever or fun as it thinks it is. It’s a loud pointless achievement in sadism and failed satire with no feel for dynamics, the caped, self-impressed rendition of the Saw movies for greasy basement dwellers. The final moments in the movie promise a sequel, though I for one won’t be upset in the slightest to see that promise broken.