Written By: Mike Agostinelli
You know that one person in your life who turns everything into a joke, is constantly rattling off their mouth, and who sometimes you just want to slap in the face and bury in a hole in hopes you’ll have a few precious moments of peaceful silence? That’s Deadpool in a nutshell.
The haphazard plot unfolds like this: A guy gets cancer after meeting the love of his life (who happens to be a filthy stripper and hooker). He is offered a spot in an experimental program designed to bring out latent mutant powers in people who have been given medical death sentences. Things go wrong, and our beloved protagonist sets off on a manic revenge mission as the “hero” Deadpool.
This is clearly a passion project. Ryan Reynolds has tried for years to get a faithful adaptation of this character to the screen, and now that it’s finally here, I’m met with mixed feelings. It’s fun in spurts. The beginning and the end are borderline perfect, with subversive humor and compelling action scenes being the highlight. There’s a sort of sick glee to be had in seeing a superhero rattle off swear words while gutting guys and hacking off limbs. A sense of total abandon hangs over the proceedings. It’s also fantastic to see an accurate portrayal of the X-Man Colossus on the big screen after several disappointing turns in the prior X-Men films. Which is a good time to hammer home the point that yes, this is taking place in the X-Men movie universe. This is one of the films strengths, as well as one of its weaknesses. When you keep cutting back to the X-Mansion but only show two characters inside (Colossus and the highly vague Negasonic Teenage Warhead), a sense of cheapness can’t help but be brought forward. The fact that Deadpool even mentions this doesn’t help to cover up that fact.
The cheapness continues with the dreary, depressing set work and clearly crappy Vancouver weather. This movie was made for $58 million. That’s unheard of for any superhero flick. And it shows. Everything is overly dingy and just plain ugly looking. I assume this was meant to add a sense of grit to the proceedings. But isn’t this supposed to be a comedy? I don’t find a guy with cancer being electrocuted, drowned, deprived of oxygen, and getting brutally scarred in gory detail very comedic. Don’t get me wrong: I’m no movie prude or violence wimp. But the tone here is wildly uneven. Do you want this to be funny, or are we going for something darker? You can’t have it both ways.
The score is also terrible. It’s nothing but a bunch of electronic “brrraiiiimmmm” and “bzzzzz” noises that will likely tighten some EDM losers pants but left me with nothing but disappointment. Its “composed” by Junkie XL, who will also be lending a hand on the Batman Vs Superman soundtrack, which unfortunately doesn’t bode very well for that. The use of old school 90’s rap and 80’s jams is a clear attempt to rip off Guardians of the Galaxy and it does so to mixed results.
I didn’t hate this movie. I just wanted to like it more. I’ll likely buy it just to add it to my X-Men collection. I mean, I even own the terrible first Wolverine movie because of that, and this is nowhere near that level. It’s just that people are going to literally have sex with this movie. They’ll praise it up and down, saying its the best thing in years. That it’s such a “breath of fresh air” and they’ll sit there and laugh at every damn joke, like every word that comes out of Reynolds mouth is a message from God (like everyone in my IMAX showing). It’s not THAT funny bro. And its not THAT entertaining. But I suppose its funny and entertaining enough to get by. And that should count for something.
I give Deadpool a 7 out of 10.
I’ll be back next month with a review of Daredevil Season 2 (yay!) followed closely thereafter by my review for the mother of all movies….Batman Vs Superman. Can you hear the heavenly choir singing? I can.