Breaking all the walls

Rating: 7/10 (17 February 2016)

It's been said of "The Howard Stern Show" that it appeals exclusively to the very stupid and the very smart. The same could be said of "Deadpool," albeit with a narrower spectrum, trimmed at the latter end.
Deadpool is unique among his superhero brethren, in that he's quite aware of his status as a fictional character--there's an existential crisis in that sentence somewhere. He is constantly playing to the audience, whether it be moving the camera to save his viewers from witnessing the coming violence, or shamelessly mocking his own genre--Hugh Jackman jokes aplenty; digs at the lack of financial support from Fox. As a character, Deadpool strips away all the respect and pretension that his compatriots have worked so long to receive.
Unfortunately, Deadpool's impish presence doesn't bleed over into the narrative itself, which is the usual superhero fare of initially horrid transformations, lost lovers and the sweet revenge that caps it all off. While these steps are taken with an abnormal--but welcome-- amount of sardonicism and waggishness, it wasn't enough to grab my interest--merely tapping it on the shoulder and inquiring whether or not it's free for the next couple of hours, to which my interest declines, having been burned before. However, the disjointed structure of the film works in its favor, turning the dull bits into fleeting detours. In other words, anytime Wade Wilson isn't in the suit, the movie suffers.
As far as the comedy goes, I respected the air of contempt more than the jokes themselves, which, more often than not, are foul balls. And Deadpool's "creative 15-year-old who doesn't apply himself" vocabulary becomes grating over time. There are a few winners however:
--Deadpool informs a blind woman that 150 kilos of cocaine are buried somewhere in her house, as well as the cure to blindness.
--When Colossus is going to take Deadpool to Professor Xavier and Deadpool replies: "McAvoy or Stewart?"
--The black knight scene--a tried and true gag.
--The baby hand.
The broadly talentless Ryan Reynolds--Deadpool said it, not me-- needs to hold on to this character like his career depends on it, because it does. Just as Downey Jr. has realized--failing financially and critically in anything where he doesn't where an iron suit--Reynolds needs Deadpool more than Deadpool needs him.
I'm looking forward to the sequel, in which Deadpool fights his greatest foil, Kirk Douglas.