MEDIOCREMOVIE.CLUB
  • Reviews
  • Side Pieces
  • Shane of Thrones
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Archives
  • Game of Thrones Fantasy

Deadpool

2/17/2016

2 Comments

 
PictureHi doggie.
by Phil Crone

​“Deadpool” is going to grab headlines and long be remembered as the movie that proved a hard R superhero movie will lure audiences when done well.  I hope that that isn’t the only lesson learned here.  Deadpool deftly weaves a tale of a flawed hero and villain within genre-defying violence and equally raunchy humor for a crowd-pleasing package with more of a soul than it has any right to have.

Deadpool has been billed as a different superhero, fond of over the top violence and humor that pushes all boundaries of good taste.  No punches are pulled for the genre – this movie earns its R rating gleefully.  The jokes are rapid-fire and relentless to the point where it’s easy to miss entire chunks of the movie as they are drowned away in laughter.  The majority of the best lines come at the expense of the genre, especially the X-men movies themselves.  You don’t need a great familiarity with other superhero movies to get the bulk of the references, but fans of the genre will certainly appreciate them more.  Unfortunately, several lines do miss the mark, mostly thanks to being too sophomoric.  This is a major problem in the first third of the movie, but luckily, this falls off.  The violence is certainly hard and heavy, but I wouldn’t call it gross by any measures.  “Kingsman” still has Deadpool beat from that standpoint.  Gratuitous for sure, but not overplayed just because the movie can get away with it.  The bulk of the violence is of course played for laughs and works well.

While it would be commendable for Deadpool to just nail the major beats and have fun, what pushes it into the upper stratosphere of the genre is how it treats its titular hero.  Deadpool is an unstable personification of id, and his journey never lets the audience forget that.  Both he and his antagonist Ajax’s motivations are the basest of human emotions and flaws: vanity, pride, wrath, and greed.  These thread their way through the action of the story, resulting in something that ultimately is more interesting than your typical superhero fare that you’d see in other origin stories.  Deadpool is self-assured, and he stays that way right until the conclusion that was true to the characters built in this world.  However, from an action and spectacle standpoint, it was a little underwhelming given that we live in a post-Avengers world.  That can be written off to the rather paltry $58 million budget, and I’m sure Deadpool 2 will remedy this.

The story remains fully focused on Deadpool, and the supporting characters help fill out that character.  It would have been easy to gloss over the relationship between Wade and Vanessa, but I enjoyed the lengths the movie went to to show the uniqueness of their relationship.  Colossus could have easily been mutant filler, but having him as Deadpool’s “angel on the shoulder” was smart and resulted in some great moments.  Ajax, as previously mentioned, is a villain with understandable motivations used as an effective parallel to Deadpool.  The remainder are there for either comic relief (Weasel, Blind Al) or battle filler (Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Angel Dust), and they accomplish their goals.

Ultimately, Deadpool is better than it has any right to be, and it meets the lofty expectations placed upon it.  It could have been nothing more than a laugh-a-minute bloodfest and been perfectly fine.  However, it takes a character that shouldn’t be interesting enough to warrant his own story and turn it into a potential franchise.  Now, who’s going to play Cable in Deadpool 2?

Grade: A

2 Comments
Drew
2/17/2016 01:13:35 pm

Nicely done as you usually do.

My only complaint about the film - and I will attempt to be as spoiler free as possible - was its premise. I am not saying it was undeserved but it was his whole motivation. However, his side stuff as you mentioned - comedy, personality, backstory, violence - all became the forefront to where the premise was an afterthought. The reason the detraction was small was that it served a small purpose of the film.

Deadpool is one of my favorite Marvel characters and really the only one who could do him justice in film was Ryan Reynolds. He really brought the comic character to life as the "merc with a mouth."

Anyway, nicely done. Now go grade it in the database!

Reply
Phil
2/17/2016 01:51:50 pm

Yeah I have a ton of grades to dump on the spreadsheet. Might do it over lunch tomorrow.

Regarding critism of the premise, and it's impossible not to get SPOILERY here... wouldn't it have felt intellectually dishonest for Deadpool to have some high-minded goal around saving the world or something? That wasn't what this movie was or this character is. It's basically a revenge movie with a damsel to boot, but grounding everything in Deadpool's vanity is what made it special for me.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Side Pieces

    Random projects from the MMC Universe. 

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Adventure
    Author - Bryan
    Author - Drew
    Author - Jon
    Author - Phil
    Author - Sean
    Best Of 2016
    Best Of 2017
    Best Of 2018
    Best Of 2019
    Best Of 2020
    Best Of 2021
    Best Of 2022
    Best Of The Decade
    Classics
    Comedy
    Crime
    Documentary
    Drama
    Ebertfest
    Game Of Thrones
    Historical
    Horror
    Musical
    Romance
    Sci Fi
    Thriller
    TV
    Western

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    RSS Feed