COLOSSUS: THE MOTION PICTURE - A REVIEW

Double confession: Despite expressing my lack of interest in the Deadpool movie, last night I went to see it.

Even more shamefully, I enjoyed it. Mostly.

In my defence, I had a free ticket courtesy of my friend, but even so, I felt a little grubby about the whole affair. Deadpool to me symbolises the very worst of ’90s comics, the tipping point at which Marvel turned to a crapfest of guns and pouches and everything being EXTREME. The arrival of Deadpool represented the start of what might well have been the slow death of my interest in comics. I turned away from Marvel, turned away from comics completely, only to be saved by a chance encounter with one of DC’s finest titles (as discussed at nauseating length here).

Maybe this whole comics obsession thing wasn't such a good idea after all.

So Deadpool had a mountain to climb to reach my affections. To make matters worse, I’ve never been able to stomach Ryan Reynolds in anything. Green Lantern, Blade Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine… his snarky, cocky charisma clearly connects with lots of people, but I find him pretty much intolerable. Nothing personal, just a matter of taste. He's the cucumber of actors. 

And then there were the painfully unfunny trailers. It looked like a complete disaster. Never have I been less interested in a comic book movie – and I even went, with some mild enthusiasm, to see Fan4tastic, so this is a pretty low bar. Yet the entire geek community seemed to be absolutely in love with this dreck.

I have never felt so alone.

There was, however, one big, steel fly in the ointment of my wrath – Colossus. One of my favourite X-Men, one of my favourite Marvel heroes, one of my favourite fictional characters, full stop. And here he was, looking pretty good, with an actual personality and actual lines of dialogue, far more than he’d ever been given in any X-Men film. Damn you, Fox. Damn you. I may have no choice to see this after all.

Two-ton dreamboat.

So it came to pass that I found myself in a cinema, watching a Deadpool film, loathing myself a little bit. And it was… pretty good, as it happens. Utterly generic, but knowingly so. Some really great action sequences (especially the brilliant climactic battle), a startling horror atmosphere during one sequence, and some surprisingly sweet romance beats. The supporting players are for the most part excellent – Colossus was handled really well, and gets into some brutal action during his brouhaha with Gina Carano’s fantastic Angel Dust, who is in no way responsible for my burgeoning evil-women-with-quiffs-and-super-strength fetish. Brianna Hildebrand's Negasonic Teenage Warhead is a charmingly surly adolescent who packs a big punch, and Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa is a compelling romantic foil, albeit thanklessly relegated to the clichéd damsel-in-distress role during the third act.

Why no Monster Magnet cameo in this movie? Dave Wyndorf needs new bell bottoms.

On the downside, I recognise I have some baggage here, but my least favourite aspect of Deadpool was Deadpool himself. To be honest, little about the film served to change my mind about either Reynolds or Deadpool. It was unclear whether we, the audience, are supposed to like/sympathise with Wade Wilson at all. Yes, he undergoes a horrible ordeal and does everything he does in the name of love, but on the other hand he’s relentlessly annoying and a complete arsehole. It’s like being trapped in a wardrobe with Adam Sandler.

Further downsides are the agonisingly nondescript and forgettable main villain, who makes Ant-Man’s Darren Cross look like Dr Doom by comparison, and supposed comedy relief sidekick TJ Miller, who is roughly as entertaining as a dead dog floating in a toddler pool.

Squeeze, Gina. Squeeeeeeze.

My biggest problem with Deadpool is that, while it’s a pretty good comic-book movie, its focus is largely comedic. No bad thing in theory, except that, to be brutally honest, Deadpool is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. There are a handful of good gags, but the seemingly endless stream of witless duds is frankly wearying. If you buy into Reynolds’ smartass/dumbass motormouth schtick, maybe it’s a lot more effective, but his delivery just doesn’t work for me. In combining superheroics and comedy, it superficially has a lot in common with Guardians of the Galaxy, but the latter does so much more successfully – thanks in no small part to the naturally funny, dangerously personable and thoroughly dreamy Chris Pratt. 

What Deadpool does is weld a good, if formulaic formula superhero/revenge flick to a tiresome frat-boy comedy under the pretence of being subversive and irreverent. While there is some fourth-wall breaking and a few digs at superhero cinema (the X-Men franchise in particular), that side of it is relatively polite, almost cursory. But that's where Deadpool's real potential lies, and I feel the film would have benefitted from pushing these elements much, much further to create something far sillier and much bolder. And maybe it will do that in the inevitable sequel (which should ideally be called The Inevitable Deadpool Sequel). I’m thinking Adaptation meets Adventure Time meets Byrne's She-Hulk meets the end of Blazing Saddles. With katanas.