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Deadpool
Superhero Action Comedy / English / 2016

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
For the Action Movie Countdown.

This movie has ONE JOB: Keep it clean.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Pizza, Pork, Eggs, Tuna Casserole, Marriage, hell even Sex, it did not keep it clean.

This movie was pretty much just what I expected it to be, but a teensy bit funnier. A got a couple good laughs out of it, I really liked the extreme self-awareness like the X-Men references and the pointing out of tropes like the Superhero Landing (he now owns the tvtropes quote) and whatnot, I really liked those. A few self-aimed jabs at Ryan Reynolds who I've liked since Just Friends, stomached in Buried, and avoided in The Green Lantern (which is also referenced). A bunch of comments about general geekery really do hammer home that Deadpool really is a superhero fan's sort of superhero and here they've perhaps broadened him a bit to catch the more casual comic book movie fans that will recognize jokes about distinguishing "origin stories" and "ensemble casts".

I've really little familiarity with the Deadpool character, but I know that irreverence is a big part of his character. Unfortunately, you can take irreverence too far and what could have been an amusing subversion of superhero tropes featuring a self-depricating character without the classical sense of justice could have worked brilliantly and I do say that there are regular moments of cleverness in the movie, particularly in regards to the dialog... but then you just got potty humor.



Farting followed by "hashtag #driveby" is as millennial and juvenile as it gets and hearing Deadpool reference Twitter and Facebook and go on about drugs, ****, sex, and even **** WITH sex is more than enough to dial the funny meter way down for me.

The tonal whiplash that comes from ripping back and forth between the goofy and over-the-top present to the awkward and too-serious origin story doesn't do it much favors either. It just begins with Deadpool in a cab picking gum out of the seats, it seriously couldn't just stay there, we needed to stick to convention and give him a tragic backstory? There isn't even any lampshade hung on this, we just get this self-aware parody that can't even remain a parody.

Was I supposed to connect to his relationship with this girl? Am I supposed to treat this like Mask or something? What happened to Death? Why is he dating Copycat?

Whatever, just as I figured they bent too low for the jokes and even put a bullet in Deadpool's rectum while they were at it.

I figure this movie is aimed at the sorts of people who are either diehard Deadpool fans or just haven't heard these sorts of jokes before.


Final Verdict:
[Meh...]