A love story against all odds

The marketing wasn’t misleading after all. Deadpool is a ridiculously entertaining, 4th-wall breaking, non-linear, crude, cathartic superhero “ROMANCE.” Wade Wilson’s a big old softie underneath the mutated epidermis. It’s an overall cynically hilarious, meta-overloaded (to a fault), tongue-in-cheek, absurdist fun. Imperfect yet compulsively watchable. And surely the career-defining role Ryan Reynolds was aching for (Green Lantern, who?).

Far from perfect, Deadpool suffers its deal of grievances. Not the most aesthetically appealing film, but what it loses in aesthetics gains in thematics. That’s the one thing you can not deny, it stays true to its cause. Humor is both a strength and weakness in Deadpool. Reynolds is pretty fabulous as the title lead, but the film relentlessly tries to be so meta/quick/clever, it becomes overbearing, repetitive unfunny, and tiring at times. It is very much a film of a first-time director. Story is sometimes forgotten or sacrificed in the name of comedy. There are also lots of wasted/underplayed characters and villains that took away from the experience of it all. The most disappointing, being the two X-Men rejects who added absolutely nothing to the movie. Pure distraction, movie would have been a better, leaner film without them. They also took away from the already disappointing climatic final battle.

The untraditional misanthropic love story between Deadpool and Angel Dust is actually the strongest element of the film (although I wouldn’t be surprised if some aren’t taken as I was). Which is a necessary choice, given how we’re supposed to sympathize and root for such a lovable scumbag. Although there are some tonal shifts there that didn’t completely work for me.