Deadpool

Remember a couple of years ago when Guardians of the Galaxy came out and everyone was raving about how great and funny it was, and then when you finally saw it months later, on an airplane, it was just another dumb by-the-numbers movie that made little sense? Well, if you're me, you remember that. Well now Deadpool is out and everyone is raving about how great and funny it it and you've seen it thanks to a Friday matinee and actually it's okay.

Deadpool runs up against the hard limits of making fun of some genre while still hitting all the numbers. Loudly announcing, "Number three!" doesn't make plot point number three any less tedious. But it's still okay. The opening shot of a man named "Rob L." getting shot in the head (seriously, fuck him) was a good start. Ryan Reynolds playing Deadpool like the hyperactive lead in a romantic comedy was even better, though most of the fourth-wall-breaking stuff falls flat.

Anyway, since Deadpool has only been around since the 1990s, there needs to be an origin story, but since Deadpool has only been around since the 1990s, nobody cares what it is. The screenwriters ("the real heroes here") decide on a voiceover and flashbacks. There's bloody comedy action—Jackie Chan with slow-mo and blood squibs, and a bit too much wink-wink oh-ho we're R-RATED ain't we kids stuff, which leads into an extended stupid flashback about Deadpool meeting The Girl, who is of course a whore and who is also of course the made-for-TV-dead-weight-in-movies Morena Baccarin. Super-buff Deadpool has cancer for no reason—was there even something something depleted uranium from Iraq or is that too edgy for this edgy picture—but this being Marvel there's always room for an in-shape shitkicker to get some supertreatments and become a superhero!

But no. Baddy Francis tortures our hero into developing his latent mutant powers and tee-hee-hees in his British accent. (A British Villain call-out early on does not save us from this cretinous nobody.) Anyway, there's some stuff about how no he'll just be made a superslave and then Deadpool wises up and does some Houdini stuff. Finally there's more fighting and whatnot and then we're back in real-time and there is also more fighting.

And there's some allegedly funny stuff, like jerk-off jokes and stuff about Ikea. And there's some interesting stuff, like Deadpool's bartender friend, and Leslie Uggams who is just by far the best actor in the whole movie though she is given nothing to do, and also Deadpool takes it up the ass from his girlfriend. And a couple of the jokes are pretty funny, and there are a couple of second-string X-Men nobody cares about. Colossus has more in common with DC's goody-goody Captain Marvel than any X-Men character and Negasonic Teenage Warhead exists because Baccarin is thirty-six years old! She'll have to start playing social workers and grandmothers and breast cancer ladies soon!


Wank to this.

In the end, Deadpool is every superhero movie, with plenty of elbow nudges about superhero movies, but not enough cleverness to avoid tedious shit like Francis constantly demanding from Deadpool "What's my name?" (He doesn't like being called Francis, and tries "Ajax" rather than, say, "Frank.") But it's in color, and it's mostly in focus, and it's a talkie, and the stakes are low enough and the action centered enough on a simple tale of revenge that there are no horrific offenses to common sense except for those absolutely essential to the genre, and Ryan Reynolds can almost act and he even queens it up a bit here and there, so why not? Deadpool! Huzzah!