As funny and charming as tearing a toenail, “Deadpool” aggressively, self-consciously struggles to maintain the delusional belief that it’s OK to make another failed, obnoxious superhero movie starring Ryan Reynolds as long as you constantly show you’re aware that “Green Lantern” exists and that “Deadpool” is a long way from the “X-Men” universe that people actually care about.
Occasionally feeling like Ace Ventura loaded up on stale pop culture references and plopped into Marvel Comics (sample quip: “I’m about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the late ’90s”), Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynolds) insists he’s not a superhero, mostly because he’s an unfunny, self-interested jackass fixed on revenge, with no moral compass to consider. He’s also, thanks to a bizarre experiment meant to both cure his cancer and turn him into a mutant, virtually invincible, which really makes action sequences super-exciting when you know the main character can repair any damage, from chopping off his own hand to getting a sword through the head. Goodbye, tension; hello, impatience.
To be clear: Bad taste can be fun (I liked “Dirty Grandpa,” for god’s sake.) Most of “Deadpool”—which shockingly comes from the writers of “Zombieland,” which was clever instead of mean—unfolds as either a setup for a lame, feebly edgy one-liner (“I’ve never said this, but don’t swallow”) as if nothing could be more delightful than giving Andrew Dice Clay bloodlust and a costume. If you think that reference is outdated, please see all of the others that actually made in the film.
Though he’s infinitely better onscreen when hanging up his snark (go rent “Mississippi Grind” now, dammit), Reynolds deserves no blame here; he leans into the spirit of the thing and lands a couple chuckles with the right delivery. But just because a movie opens with self-referential credits acknowledging that the plot will involve a British villain and a hot chick and comic relief and a moody teenager, and was directed by “an overpaid tool,” doesn’t justify the product itself failing to defend or invert any of the clichés.
In addition to primarily evaluating its women based on sexual potential and equating physical fireworks with love, the tiresome yet underwritten “Deadpool” wants to have it both ways, seeming very proud of itself while constantly overcompensating for its own mediocrity. Oftentimes the least funny people are the ones who laugh at themselves, and this franchise beginner/killer doesn’t literally do that, but it may as well.
Avoid. 1 star (out of four)
Selected quote: “Please don’t make the supersuit green.” —Deadpool, winking at Green Lantern
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