Deadpool review

DEADPOOL:

A VULGAR, VIOLENT, AND MEAN SPIRITED MARVEL COMICS MOVIE IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** 1/2 out of 4

20^TH CENTURY FOX AND MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT

Ryan Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool

            Where do I start with this movie? After last year’s colossally disappointing Fantastic Four movie, 20^th Century Fox gives one more shot at adapting a popular Marvel Comics superhero into a movie. Lately it seems like most of the Marvel movies that come out these days can only be great if it’s being distributed by Marvel Studios for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, granted Fox’s X-Men movies still bring in the bucks and while Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man movie was a solid new take on the story, its sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was heavily studio driven and left audiences underwhelmed, not to mention they’re rebooting it again, but I digress.

            So seeing how they “Supposedly” used Deadpool before in the 2009 X-Men prequel, X-Men Origins: Wolverine with Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, Green Lantern, The Change-Up) portraying the character, 20^th Century Fox decided to give Deadpool his own movie with Reynolds reprising the role. And DON’T WORRY, it’s NOTHING like the X-Men Origins Deadpool, no, this Deadpool is cocky, arrogant, violent, vulgar, fourth wall breaking, mean spirited, always cracking one-liners, should I keep going? To put it simpler, this Deadpool is actually good and it represents the original comic very well.

            Parents and guardians of young children, I know a lot of you like to take your kids to see comic book movies, but HEAR THESE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY GODDAMN MOUTH! Do Not, I repeat DO NOT take your kids to see this one! That’s right, this is the first R-rated Marvel movie since 2008’s Punisher: War Zone and the first R-rated X-Men movie for good reasons.

            Unlike the child friendly X-Men or Fantastic 4 movies, Deadpool is darkly vulgar and mean spirited, it’s bloody, foul-mouthed, filled with lots of sex jokes, and of course those Fucking F-Bombs. So yeah, this is basically one of those Blade, Punisher, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Kick-Ass types of comic book movies, where it’s heavily violent with its premise, but unlike some of those movies, it’s done in the right way.

            The film manages to balance traditional comic book elements such as flashy superpowers and a couple CG characters, with Kill Bill style bloody violence, and the vulgar language and humor from films like Pulp Fiction, American Pie, or Superbad. A little like the Kick-Ass movies, but those movies did go into harsh realistic violence at times, this movie however is straight up cartoony bloody, raunchy goodness from beginning to end.

            The film follows mercenary Wade Wilson (Reynolds), who spends his time in New York City protecting teenage girls from stalkers. He soon meets sexy Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin-Firefly, Serenity, Stargate SG-1) and the two of them get together, have sex every Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays nobody really cares about.

They’re just living an awesome life, until they discover that Wade has a supposedly incurable cancer, so they try to make the best of what he has left. In comes The Recruiter (Jed Rees-The X-Files, Hawkeye, Galaxy Quest) of the secret Weapon X program enlists Wade into the program to possibly cure his cancer and make him not just better, but better than better.

So after countless considerations and talks with his bartender friend, Weasel (T.J. Miller, How to Train Your Dragon, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Big Hero 6), Wade decides to go through the experiment being handled by Francis Freeman (Ed Skrein-Game of Thrones, The Transporter: Refueled) to remove his cancer and apparently become a superhero. At least that’s what The Recruiter tells Wade, but after the mutation serum is injected into Wade and several days of being tortured by Angel Dust (Gina Carano-Haywire, Fast & Furious 6) to activate the mutation, Wade transforms into a hideous freak of nature that resembles Freddy Krueger’s face fucking a topographical map of Utah, as quoted by Miller.

Wade suits up and becomes the foul-mouthed superhero, Deadpool, armed with ninja swords, firepower, a bad mouth, and constant fourth wall breaks to hunt down the bastards that deformed his face and possibly his sex life. But upon realizing that Francis and Angel Dust are the bad guys and have captured his girlfriend, Deadpool teams up with X-Men mutants, Colossus (Stefan Kapicic-24, The Brothers Bloom, Big Miracle) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), a superfast mutant who makes Sonic the Hedgehog look like a snail, to defeat the bad guys and save Vanessa before Francis experiments on her, and I don’t mean that sexually.

Overall, Deadpool knows exactly what it wants to be, a different type of superhero movie that doesn’t rely on any of the traditional comic book movie clichés but can still come out with a fun, energetic movie that’s worth multiple viewings, at least that’s what I got out of it.

The movie did not disappoint, especially for a February comic book movie release, because this is usually the time where mediocre or just plain bad comic book movies are released. Remember the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie or the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movies? Yeah, those came out around this time, but fortunately for us, Deadpool shoots those motherfuckers down and gives us a thoroughly enjoyable and different comic book movie, and it’s done in this cleverly silly, over the top way, geez and we’re not even at Captain America: Civil War yet.

One minor issue I have with the movie, and it’s more of a nitpick is the film’s connection with the X-Men universe, I’m not putting either one of those movies down, but X-Men I feel is more child-friendly, at least when it comes to the movies. When I was watching Deadpool I found it very difficult to associate it with X-Men, because while X-Men is something I’d show my kids, Deadpool is something I would keep as far away from my kids as possible.

Also a little off topic, but I find it weird that Deadpool, who is apparently supposed to be a mature adult comic book series shows up in these animated Marvel comics TV shows alongside Spider-Man or The Avengers. Whether Deadpool is portrayed good or bad in the show, I think it’s weird that he shows up in cartoons that are meant for kids who probably aren’t even close to being old enough to read his comics, it’s like if Eric Cartman from South Park was put in SpongeBob, it just seems weird.

But those are my only nitpicks, it’s a great film overall, if you’re a fan of over the top Tarantino style action and comic books, you’ll have a fun time with Deadpool, but if you’re looking for something grittier and serious, look somewhere else because this is dumb, over-the-top fun at its finest.

See it or I’ll cut your fucking head off, stab your friends with swords and make a kabob out of them!

Take it away Pool!