Deadpool (2016) Review

If there’s one thing we Americans love, it’s superhero movies. They don’t have to be very original or even particularly exciting superhero movies, just so long as they have superheroes who fight computer-animated nemeses and crack wise. And if there’s one other thing we Americans love, it’s vulgarity. It doesn’t have to be very original or particularly clever vulgarity, just so long as it’s vulgar and obscene. Much like when Taco Bell introduced its Dorito Quesadilla, it was only a matter of time before we combined these two great loves of our nation, the product of which is Deadpool.

Ryan Reynolds stars as Wade Wilson, a sort of thug-for-hire who only takes jobs that make bad people pay for things they’ve done to others (It’s ok for him to beat up an underage boy because the kid was a stalker or something.). He hangs around with other mercenaries at a bar where he meets and becomes quite attached to Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He likes her so much, in fact, that he walks out on her when he finds out that he has cancer, to spare her suffering.

This story takes place in the same world as the X-Men, so Wade turns to the mysterious underground scientist Ajax (Ed Skrein) who believes that he can cure the cancer by turning Wade into a self-healing mutant. He does so by putting his subjects through extensive torture with the intention of selling the newly mutated people to other criminals as slaves, which causes Wade to resent him a great deal. So when he does successfully become a disfigured mutant, he breaks out of the secret lab, dons a full-body suit, and makes it his mission to track down Ajax (Real name: Francis) and his minions and wipe them off the planet.

One of the biggest pains of being a movie critic is judging comedy, because it all really boils down to whether each individual person laughed or not. In the case of Deadpool, a full-blown comedy that actually focuses more on jokes than action, I didn’t laugh, not even once. I was mostly extremely annoyed by Reynolds’ entire character, who is perpetually snarky, crass, and unlikeable. Mind you, I’m not specifically offended by the crass nature of the film’s hero or humor, but by how humorless it is.

Take another look at last year’s Ant-Man, another Marvel movie that had a good deal of humor in it. Its hero, played by Paul Rudd who was also a co-writer, was an everyman who found humor in his life’s problems and the bad situations he found himself in. It was a relatable style of humor that built up the character to better solidify his narrative, unlike Deadpool, which uses humor to distract from the fact that there isn’t much of a story to begin with.

What makes the Deadpool character even more obnoxious than the fact that he is intentionally obnoxious (and that’s supposed to be endearing?) is how lazy his whole persona is. He breaks the fourth wall, but only so that he can point out that he’s doing so, and then point out that the fact that he pointed it out is a joke. He thinks that simply saying profane words or mentioning certain body parts is hilarious in itself, so he does it constantly without regard for taste or context. He treats other people, including his long-suffering girlfriend, his best friend (T. J. Miller), his blind roommate (Leslie Uggams), and a couple of X-Men recruiters (none of whom have any real role in the story), worse than the villains but then acknowledges that he’s a bad person, which I guess makes it all better. It’s a badly written movie is what I’m saying.

And that’s where it really falls apart for me. It would be one thing if Deadpool were a passable entertainment that I just didn’t think was funny (like most of the Marvel movies, for example), but if you take away the novelty of a superhero who says the f-word and talks about sodomy, all that’s left is just another comic book origin story, only worse than usual. I’d sooner see three new Spider-Man reboots before a Deadpool sequel.

C-