Geeky "Dave" (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his two pals go through life at high school being bullied and reading comic books. Finally fed up being put upon, he buys a superhero suit online and heads out into the night hoping that his green lycra will deter the city's nasties. After his umpteenth beating he is rescued by a like-minded father and daughter team who take him under their own wing and set about training him. Meantime, the kingpin of crime "D'Amico" (Mark Strong) is running the town with a ruthless rod of iron, watched adoringly by his hapless son "Chris" (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Surprisingly, the former trio start to have some success against this arch-baddie so battle lines are soon drawn and, well you can guess the rest. Up to a point, this works. ATJ (especially with glasses and curly hair) is very easy on the eye and there is a degree of chemistry between his character and his cohort "Mindy" (Chloë Grace Moretz) all under the tutelage of a rather underplayed Nicolas Cage as her dad "Damon". Sadly, the initially quirky start that sees real people aspiring to make their community better - without the ability to fly or laser things with their eyes - peters out quite quickly and the jokes that are quite attitudinally sharp at the start just become a little more puerile and expletive-dependent. Mr. Strong isn't really much of a baddie and the combat scenes are well and truly prolonged to the point where they end up a bit repetitive and dull. It has it's moments, this movie - it's generally quite entertaining but at all but two hours in length it just runs out of ideas around the half way mark and only just struggles over the line.
