Deadpool (A)
Director: Tim Miller
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, Brianna Hildebrand
Running time: 108 minutes
It is not a Marvel Studio-Disney film. It does not have Chris Nolan in the director’s chair. It does not star Batman. But if you walked into the 9.20am show at Inox South City, you could have been fooled. The packed hall of cheering, hooting boys and girls was a sure sign — in bold red and black — that there’s a new superhero on the block and, heck let’s say it out loud, he’s on the way to becoming more famous than Wolverine. Blasphemy? Remember Wolverine’s first solo outing in X-Men Origins: Wolverine? No? I don’t blame you. But this is one superhero story with the same X-Men tie-in that you are not forgetting in a hurry.
Deadpool is not like any superhero film you’ve seen. It is some ‘douchebag’s film’ with ‘god’s most perfect idiot’ in the lead role, produced by ‘perfect asshats’ and directed by ‘an overpaid tool’. That’s the Deadpool movie with Ryan Reynolds in the lead, produced by Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds and Lauren Shuler Donner, and directed by Tim Miller — and it works not just because he has an abusive mouth or because he breaks the fourth wall but because he is straight-up funny and does not balk at poking fun at himself or superheroes or superhero films.
From the opening titles to the end credits — with an animated Deadpool jacking off a unicorn’s horn and shooting rainbows from it (!) — it is a hoot. There are some bits that drag, especially the Weapon X experiment, and there are some jokes that are repetitive (though the roaring crowd of teens would disagree), but you forgive that.
Talking about gags, yes, most of them are crass. But what is wrong with crass humour can one ask? This is not meant to be a subtle film eyeing award nominations. This is a Deadpool movie for heaven’s sake! If you don’t like that brand of humour then you shouldn’t be watching it in the first place!
In a departure from introductory superhero films, this one lands you smack in the middle of a carnage — and by carnage one means brains being blown out, dudes being splattered like bugs against billboards, cutting off of limbs (in this case it is Ryan Reynolds’s, don’t worry he grows it back and there is quite a crass gag about it later) — before it does the whole origin story montage.
Another way in which Deadpool differs from other superhero fare is that it doesn’t take the whole superhero business too seriously, something that worked like a charm in Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, it actually pokes fun at all the ponderous “you should do good if you have power” philosophy movies like X-Men dole out. We see Colossus launch into one such dialogue as Deadpool is about to kill a bad guy, after 30 seconds he just goes ahead and shoots the man in the head, turns to a vomiting Colossus saying, “What? You were just droning on!”
The one true fault of the film is that it has a paper-thin plot. “Hot” mercenary Wade Wilson falls in love with his “future baby mama” Vanessa Carlysle, but contracts cancer. He undergoes a rogue experiment that leaves him with regenerative healing powers but a scarred face and body. He wants revenge not just for what the “British villain (still quoting the opening title here)” did to him but for kidnapping Vanessa. He enlists the help of two X-Men (Deadpool figures, and he is breaking the fourth wall here, that there are only two of them because the studio didn’t have the budget for the others) — “a moody teenager” and “a CGI character” — and fights and kills his way to a happy ending. Which does not end with an exchange of “I love yous” but with Deadpool miming the act of sexual penetration at her and she responding to seeing his ugly face with “after a few drinks it is a face that I can sit on”. Yep, “her crazy matches his crazy” perfectly.
This brings us to the fact that you are able to see (mostly) all the gory scenes — yep, you do get to see Deadpool doing a “127 Hours” — and listen to (most) dialogues unblemished by bleeps. The words testicles, balls, d**k and ass**** have been bleeped out but Deadpool is allowed to call Colossus a “c**k-thistle” and chrome penis. They have bleeped out Deadpool saying “I’m touching myself tonight” but have left the word “masturbation” unbleeped as well as the whole sentence “you look like Freddy Krueger face-fu***d a topographical map of Utah”(let it be said here that Weasel, Deadpool’s best friend and the one who said this, is one cool character). In fact, in one fast forwarded montage (yes it is very meta) the video stops at Ryan Reynolds masturbating under a sheet holding a stuffed unicorn to his face. And it did not get the axe. (Maybe, just maybe, Pahlaj ‘NotCool’ Nihalani just didn’t get!)
Most of the meta jokes — there is one where Wade asks that his superhero suit not be green, a reference to the dud film where Ryan Reynolds played Green Lantern, and another where he asks who is in charge of the Xavier’s Mansion (James) McAvoy or (Patrick) Stewart — will fall flat on people who are not clued into the world of superheroes. It also pokes fun at the whole post-credit scenes Marvel has made famous, but we don’t want to spoil it. Just hang back after those howlarious end credits, okay?
Let’s just say that Reynolds is forgiven, generously, for Green Lantern and we look forward to a sequel. Oh and no pressure Gambit!
Chandreyee Chatterjee
Is Deadpool the funniest superhero film? Tell t2@abp.in
