Another entertaining anti-superhero movie...

Rating: 8/10 (28 February 2016)

Comic book hero movie franchises can often get off to a good, fun start, then peter out so badly that you lose interest in watching more sequels. "Deadpool" has gotten off to a good start and hopefully being more anti-hero in genre will hold the (wannabe) franchise in good stead.
Ryan Reynolds plays the titular anti-hero in this movie and you get to see - through fragmented and out of sequence story - how he came to have the extraordinary powers that he does. If I've seen any of Ryan's films before this one, I don't remember them...at least for him specifically. In that way, he's kind of an "unknown" actor for me and I do like the way that the character of Deadpool is underplayed by him. As for how Deadpool came to have the powers that he does...I'm not so sure why he's so upset...given the alternative that he faced.
With the vulgar and violent nature of Deadpool, it could have been easy to make him much larger than life...like Jim Carrey's performance as The Mask...or maybe demonstrate the kind of exuberance you see by the superhero in the first Spider-Man movie, starring Toby Maguire. As it stands - in this first movie, at least - Deadpool isn't as charismatic as one might have been lead to believe (I've never read any of the comics for that character. Apparently he had a small part in one of The Wolverine movies...if I saw him there, he meant nothing to me) and nowhere near as charismatic as Chloë Grace Moretz as Hit-Girl in the "Kick-Ass" franchise. Again, this isn't a bad thing...at least not yet.
The action scenes in the movie are well done...stylised and exciting...cf. the second Avengers movie where "more" most definitely translated into 'less". Also enjoyable was the humour in this movie...Deadpool doesn't take much seriously. If you have wide pop cultural knowledge, you can play "Spot the reference"...e.g. there is a variation in this movie of an even longer Monty Python sketch which stretches the joke to breaking point. There's also a paraphrase of a famous quote from "Notting Hill". If you've seen "American psycho" you might get a kick out of the discussion on the merits of "Wham!". It's hard to say if the anti- hero's tast in music is meant to humorous too...I suspect that it is! The humour of Deadpool also gets quite "meta" at times...he refers to actors...who play characters in superhero movies...
You do see other superheroes from the Marvel universe in this movie...I just have no idea who they are...but their super powers are...suitably silly.
Some of the reviews that I read for this movie made it seem like it was particularly violent but I didn't find it particularly confronting. Some of the dialogue has sexual references, so, combining that with the violence, I'd say that this isn't a movie for the youngsters.
The character of Deadpool reminds me a bit of the Tom Baker years as The Doctor, in "Doctor Who"...but more violent. Have to say that I'm more a fan of these anti-superhero type movies than the more conventional kinds...so, I like Deadpool...as well as Watchmen, Kick- Ass and Hancock.