Don't Let the Fanboys Get to You

Rating: 6/10 (13 February 2016)

I remember stumbling into my father's office one day as he was editing footage of a thirteen- year-old boy's Bar Mitzvah. He was trying to figure out what to do with this horrible chunk of film wherein the boy and his friends were passing around a microphone, shouting any and every moronic, inane thing their brains could come up with. I recently rewatched bits of that footage under a new name: Deadpool.
Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), former Special Forces operative turned gun-for-hire, finds the love of his life, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). They understand each other, they have great fun and great sex together, and Wade is the happiest he's ever been. That is, until he inexplicably develops late-stage cancer throughout his body, and randomly leaves his girlfriend in the middle of the night to participate in some super secret experimental procedure that will cure him. The procedure turns him into an ugly freak, but grants him extraordinary healing powers, prompting Wade to seek revenge on the man who changed him, and win back his girl.
The biggest problem Deadpool has is Deadpool himself. For some reason, people seem to mistake his rampant profanity and poorly cultivated sexual humor as comedy, because it comes from the mouth of a comic book protagonist. I thought we had matured from beyond that point. I thought that Watchmen, a product of the 80s, proved that we could expect more from our superheroes. Why people choose to settle for comedy that was stale when we were middle schoolers, I don't know, but I think it bears mentioning that Deadpool doesn't tell jokes. He just curses and makes half polished "that's what she said" quips. His breaking the fourth wall shatters any sense of immersion a viewer might have experienced, and while Godard gets a pass on such antics because he's not directing story-driven action films, Tim Miller gets no such pass. Similarly, Deadpool's discussing the actors who play other X-Men characters is beyond frustrating. I want to grab the scriptwriters and scream at them. What kind of universe is this where Ryan Reynolds references himself, but doesn't acknowledge that he, himself, is currently playing Wade Wilson? I hear the argument all the time that all of this is satire. Deadpool comics exist to lampoon preexisting tropes and archetypes, but satire requires a point of view, which Deadpool ultimately lacks. In actuality, the film succumbs to the same trite stereotypes it pretends to transcend.
All that aside, there is still a considerable amount in this movie to like. Most notably, Wade and Vanessa's love story, prior to the ill conceived revenge plot. Reynolds plays Wade with charisma and energy, and Baccarin reciprocates in turn. Their characters are engagingly quirky, and some of the most well crafted and cinematic jokes come during these scenes. One scene in particular, which takes place in an arcade, stands out as my favorite sequence in the entire movie.
Unfortunately, when your movie is called Deadpool, and Deadpool is nothing more than an obnoxious man-child who leans so heavily on the crutch of generic, crass, uninspired R-rated humor, it's hard to look too fondly upon the film as a whole. Don't succumb to the fanboy hype. Realize Deadpool for the manipulative, immature rehash it is.