A couple of geeky high-school boys are hanging out discussing their favorite comic-book superheroes. One of them wonders out loud why no one has actually ever tried being a superhero; think about it, he says, thousands of people want to be Paris Hilton but nobody wants to be Spider-Man. His friend replies, quite sensibly, "That's because Spider-Man never made a porn video." The question is debated for some time before judgment is made: "Dude, if anyone did it in real life, they'd get their ass kicked!"

One of the geek-boys, Dave Lizewski, secretly decides to give it a go anyway. After buying a form-fitting green and yellow skin-suit, he slips out at night to fight crime as masked superhero Kick- Ass, and — rather predictably — gets his ass kicked in the process. Apparently that radioactive spider bite is a big part of walking the walk after all.

This is the premise of "Kick-Ass," the new superhero flick that tries to get all meta with the genre, and does so brilliantly . . . for a while. Director Matthew Vaughn ("Stardust"), working from the comic books by Mark Millar, directly confronts the white elephant in the room, that the primary audience for superhero comics is the sexually frustrated and powerless, who consume the same "beat the bad guy/get the girl" fantasy over and over again.