Related News
Deadpool suffers from bad humor
Print Edition
DEADPOOL” hates its audience, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Nothing is sacred to either this film or this character, which pokes fun at superhero movie culture, Hollywood itself, Reynolds, director Tim Miller, love and human decency — and that’s just in the opening credits.
On the page, it sounds like a lot of fun, and it starts out strong with a cheeky self-awareness. But that wears thin very quickly for the raunchy, irreverent, and very R-rated bad boy property of the Marvel comic book world, which also seems to have matured to only a fifth grade level in its humor, wit, and ideas about subversion.
The pervasive, toxic juvenileness suffocates even the more clever aspects of the film. It makes the entire experience a trying one, especially for the uninitiated who might be blindly expecting another “Avengers” or “X-Men.”
If superhero movies are going to continue to dominate the pop-cultural landscape for the foreseeable future, “Deadpool” is at least refreshing in its willingness to try something new.
It is neither “Avengers” nor “X-Men” nor anything we’ve really seen before. No heroes are born. No worlds are ending. No cities are destroyed. The body count is still preposterously high, but it’s not because some big baddy is blowing up a skyscraper. It’s just because wise guy mercenary Wade Wilson (Reynolds) agreed to lend his body to some off-the-books scientific experiments in the hopes that it might cure his cancer. It does, and it gives him super healing powers, too, but his good looks are the casualty.
“Deadpool” is essentially a revenge story from a dude who is too vain to return to his beautiful stripper girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) looking like a burn victim. So he hunts down the guy who transformed him in the first place, Ajax (Ed Skrein), to fix his skin.
To be fair, Wade was pretty twisted before his transformation into “Deadpool.” He starts out obnoxious and stays obnoxious — the mask just allows him to abandon the pretense of any social graces. For better or worse, Reynolds wears the character well.
The women aren’t much to celebrate, either, although it was amusing to have an actual adult relationship in a superhero film as opposed to the chaste, teenage coyness of so many others. But did Vanessa have to be a stripper?
Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead isn’t given much to do aside from being a punchline.
The violence is also carried out with such smirking glee that it becomes a bit uncomfortable to watch.
Comedy and sustained energy were the most important things to get right in a movie like this, and “Deadpool” whiffed on both.
In the end, it’s hard to shake the feeling that they’ve made a movie for boys that only adults are allowed to see. For the future sleepover party where some open-minded parent allows a screening, it’ll surely be a blast.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
