Deadpool Review

Deadpool on Arrival?

♦ Tripwire gave senior writer Andrew Colman the task of reviewing Tim Miller’s over-the-top superhero movie Deadpool, out at the cinema in the UK from Wednesday and starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin and Ed Skrein

Deadpool

Director: Tim Miller

Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin and Ed Skrein

Marvel Comics’ staggeringly popular property Deadpool’s feature-length debut presents a knotty problem for this grizzled old writer – how do you critically assess a film whose remit is entirely about shoehorning as many frat-house level jokes and pop culture references into 108 minutes as is inhumanly possible? The exercise, all knowing nudges and winks, is an emetic designed to be brainless, and therefore (the producers no doubt assume) criticism-proof. Nevertheless, the film did leave me wondering as I exited the screening room – are the two options for a super-hero movie either portentous, bathetic sturm und drang drowning in kitsch grandiosity, with a ludicrously violent climax, or a vapid, pre-teen parody of the genre (with a ludicrously violent climax)?

You laugh despite yourself in this movie (although the audience for the most part was fairly subdued). The opening credits sequence, done in freeze-frame, may be the high-point of this schlockfest, with all the principals given humorous prank names – the director is an “overpaid tool”, for example. Indeed he might be, but the joke is ultimately on the viewer, as no doubt such self-deprecating and sledgehammer barbs may have caused much hilarity in the producer’s office, but onscreen merely signpost what’s ahead here.

So what is ahead here, as if it really mattered? Ryan Reynolds, who indeed did feature in a “serious” super-hero project for the Distinguished Competition (which sadly tanked) stars in this modestly-budgeted, “R” rated corrective to that turkey. Here he reprises his role from seven years ago as the title character – an anti-hero who enters the Weapon X program to cure his cancer, who consequently transforms into a disfigured, ultraviolent stand-up comedian (needs to work on his material). He has a girlfriend, Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin, far too classy to be involved) who he wants to avoid due to his wounds, a cookie-cutter sadistic nemesis, Ajax / Francis, (Ed Skrein), who inducts him into the program, and Weasel (T.J. Miller) his equally amoral friend and stooge. There’s also a couple of X-Men in tow – Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and Colossus, (Stefan Kapicic) who looks like a mountain of milk-bottle tops all fused together. If he only had a brain.

And that is essentially the movie (you can work out the plot on your own). If I’m being unduly harsh it might be due to the movie’s relentlessness – there are characters, but no characterisation – and there are few pauses for breath, either (although there’s never a shortage of time for a masturbation joke). Everything is at the behest of the aforementioned remit – constant breaking of the fourth wall, nudity, bum and willy jokes, mandatory references to other films. The only exception to this would be the origin section, where our hero is reborn – all agony, isolation and clinical cold-eyed abasement, and very out of place. It got wearing enough that my compadre Joel fell asleep for a few minutes (he’ll hate me for mentioning that). Granted, it’s the character from the funnybooks, but that is the trouble – it works so much better in four color. The film is a charmless extended episode of the often-wonderful Teen Titans Are Go, or Brave And The Bold, plus the tawdriness, squalid tropes, F-bombs and Stan Lee gurning in the corner (what the hell are you doing, Stan??). Deadpool the character is all triple salkos, bouncing off cars and buildings, mugging to the camera and wanton dismemberment of his foes, who are just so much video-game fodder. In costume he’s like a cross between a hyperactive, obnoxious kid brother, who craves your undivided attention for one hour and forty-eight minutes, and a life-size resin sculpture.

And it’s all been done before, by the equally cynical Kick Ass – both films being far too pleased with themselves, as if being ironic, however unsubtly, was a get-out clause. In the end it is, as fanboys are wont to say, a “popcorn movie” – switch your brain off, take your kids (oh, wait a minute, you can’t!) and revel in the latest bawdy spandex romp (totes amazeballs!). However, as Tripwire is now adopting the Q Magazine approach (critiques must be leavened with constructivity and equivocation) I will say this. The leads are all game, especially Reynolds, Baccarin may not be capable of being saucy but she does turn up (she clearly signed on to expand her range), several of the gags do work, and the film is adequately directed and doesn’t completely outstay its welcome. Well, ish. It’s no accident that this project was in development stasis for over a decade – not many comedy super-hero films get it right, and there have been enough of them already (notwithstanding the humour quotient in all the Marvel flicks). Resorting to the lowbrow shouldn’t be the only option, but regardless of that, it’ll still be proclaimed as a success by the legions of zealots and zombies.

And who am I to argue with them?

ANDREW COLMAN

Deadpool www.tripwiremagazine.co.uk