Review: DEADPOOL

DEADPOOL
(ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI)
2.5 out of 4 stars
Directed by Tim Miller
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapicic, Leslie Uggams, Jed Rees, Karan Soni
Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity.
108 minutes
Verdict: The proudly nasty superhero blockbuster has its moments, but outside of those, it can be surprisingly dull.  It's like a mix between "Looney Tunes", "Happy Tree Friends" and that dumb ELEKTRA movie from 2005.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN DEADPOOL IF YOU LIKED:
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE  (2009)
KICK-ASS  (2010)
BLADE  (1998)
ELEKTRA  (2005)
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD  (2010)

It should be noted that the movie DEADPOOL, and its eponymous character from Marvel Comics (tied into the larger X-Men universe) comes with a fair bit of baggage, even before all the fresh new hype that comes with having the biggest box office opening for an R-rated movie ever.  Nicknamed the "Merc With a Mouth", the talkative, wisecracking antihero has built up a devoted fanbase since his first appearance 25 years ago in February 1991, thanks to his irreverent, anarchic and perpetually facetious personality that allows him to act as a foil to nearly everyone he encounters.  He regularly breaks the fourth wall, loves chimichangas, is absurdly violent and does everything a hero isn't supposed to all while making a big joke of it; basically, he's totally your average unfair stereotype of a basement-dwelling internet rebel's wet dream.  So he's kind of like the anime of the Marvel Universe: if he's on a person's t-shirt, that will factor into how close (or not close) you feel safe standing near that person at a loud, poorly-lit party.  Okay, needless to say, I'm not wild about the cult of Deadpool, so I was not looking forward to his big feature film, especially because they pretty much nailed the character in 2009's X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.  Nah, just kidding.  X-MEN ORIGINS was not a good movie, but you have to admire the nerves of the people who made it to take fan-favorite character Deadpool, beloved for his wacky, talkative personality, and completely remove his whole damn mouth and make his trademark katana swords part of his hands.
Now, after years of campaigning to get the character his own film, the one the fans want, with the red suit, the fourth wall-breaking, the irreverent humor and the sacred R rating, Ryan Reynolds has reprised the role and given everything he has to it.  Whether or not fans will/have like/liked it is a foregone conclusion, and I've already admitted an aversion to character and his following, but that apprehension was starting to melt away after a week of hype.  It had decent reviews and has already made a big imprint on the future of the superhero movies, resurrecting the idea that an R-rated superhero movie can be successful, and what the hell, there was some pretty funny stuff in the trailers.  So I admit that by the time came that I finally watched it, I was a little bit excited.
It was a letdown from that point, but not entirely.  DEADPOOL has two different movies going on, and one is eye-rollingly, but amusingly, tasteless and anarchic, blending superheroes, Looney Tunes and Happy Tree Friends, and the other is pretty much just like every dull off-season superhero movie, such as ELEKTRA or GHOST RIDER.  Most of the former is in the first third or so of the film, where the movie opens on Wade Wilson/Deadpool, ready made with powers and elaborate costume (for a movie that makes so many meta wisecracks about superheroes and superhero movies, it's surprising that they don't address how he, like many movie superheroes, is suddenly a professional-grade designer/tailor/outfitter), in the middle of a recklessly destructive, violent pursuit on an expressway, going after someone named "Francis", for reasons we don't yet know.  This gets past the usual complaint about origin stories that take up a healthy chunk of the movie getting to the costumed action, but after a little while, we end up sitting through that healthy chunk of origin anyway, and for much of it, there's a steady stream of jokes, and through the law of averages, some of them hit, and it makes this all go down more smoothly.  There's no distinction between dishonorably discharged Special Forces operative turned enforcer-for-hire Wade Wilson and his alter ego; both are borderline insufferable assholes with a perpetual supply of wisecracks and an abundance of rudeness for everyone he interacts with, but he loves his prostitute girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).  But terminal cancer interrupts his happy, hedonistic life, and with nothing left to lose, he accepts an offer for an experimental cure where he meets Ajax (Ed Skrein), aka Francis, who tortures him in order to trigger a response from his latent mutant genes, resulting in a highly accelerated and apparently unlimited healing ability that cures his cancer but permanently disfigures him.

Occasionally, a couple of Professor Xavier's X-Men show up, the steel-skinned Russian muscle-dude Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic; motion-capture performance by Andre Tricoteux and Greg LaSalle) and sullen teen trainee Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who Deadpool wryly notes were the only X-Men 20th Century Fox would give them.  Colossus, who also has a pretty decent following, has made fleeting appearances in previous X-Men movies as played by Daniel Cudmore, who declined to appear in this film, but now when he's finally given a substantial role, he appears only as a CGI character, as cartoonish in his personality as his appearance.  Negasonic Teenage Warhead, meanwhile, is an entirely uninspired, run-of-the-mill angsty teenager with a "kewl" name.  While Deadpool himself is comedic, there's still the usual "comic relief" characters who provide two of the movie's big highlights; T.J. Miller as Weasel, Wade's best bud and bartender at the mercenary bar, and Leslie Uggams as Wade's elderly blind woman roommate, Blind Al.  Frankly, I like to see a movie about Weasel, running the merc bar, making deadpan wisecracks, and maybe a backstory to explain why this bar for rage-fueled murderers-for-hire is so well stocked on Mike's Hard Lemonade.  Blind Al could have a TV show.  I'd watch it.
As Deadpool, Reynolds is mostly pretty fun, and ironically, while the character is more often a foil for other characters, his best moments come when he's been impeded himself and his resulting puerile outbursts.  He's pretty obnoxious too, though, and you don't necessarily want to see him win (the character originated as a villain in the comics, and may work better that way).  When he leans into the character's cutesiness, it's cringe-worthy, but even if these moments are too frequent, they're also usually brief.  In the costume, Deadpool is like a live-action cartoon trickster character like Bugs Bunny, but using the same persona as Wade, he's far, far less endearing.  I had concerns going in about how a movie with the level of snark and smug smartassery suggested in the advertising would keep from becoming unbearable over 100 minutes, but the movie doesn't attempt to sustain that tone throughout.  Ironically, it was the moments in which they tried to play it a little more straight or sincere that it became that total drudge I was dreading.  In contrast to the over-the-top farce that the beginning of the movie establishes, when the movie tries to treat Wade's cancer diagnosis or relationship to Venessa with any seriousness, it immediately rings false.  The tonal shifts are wild, and once they get to setting up the serious stakes of the third act, it just feels boring.
For a new twist in the superhero genre, DEADPOOL doesn't offer much new; in fact, much of what it does feels old, like the B-list superhero movies of ten years ago.  It's big thing is that it's rated R, a promise it delivers handsomely on, occasionally to an unnecessary level, with gruesome brain matter and guts spraying from Deadpool's victims onto the street, and gross-out sex jokes.  On a side note, it's unclear why the X-Men are putting all their efforts into trying to recruit Deadpool when, if this were an X-Men movie, I'm pretty sure they'd be disabling and apprehending him.  He's doing some pretty bad stuff.  Not just like 'funny bad', but rampant selfish destruction and murder (he admits as much).  It's a little funny, but it definitely makes you question the X-Men's reliability as good-doers.  All in all, it's fine, with the fun stuff balancing the boring stuff, but this is mostly fan service.