The standard line being used to express love for "Deadpool", the
20th Century Fox adaptation of the Marvel Comics anti-hero is that it's
the closest we have come to a live action Bugs Bunny cartoon. Fair
enough, since the movie capitalizes massively on the creaky conceit of
"breaking the 4th wall", the unspoken barrier which separates the
characters on the stage from the audience in the theater. In this
scenario, a character turns and speaks directly to the crowd sitting in
the dark, commenting on the play itself, implicating the viewers in an
implicit conspiracy involving the darker plot machinations that would
not be thematically feasible unless the ticket holders were there, eaves
dropping and looking in on the lives of those on the stage. Hardly a
new technique ,one I encountered in college while attending plays by
German/Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, who devised his idea of the "alienation effect" and "Epic theater"
to provoke the structures of the sort of fiction they use to entertain
themselves and , in the process of interrogating the conditions of the
genre imperatives that determine outcomes and contain philosophies that
encourage passive acceptance of capitalist inevitability, a crowd would
be freed of the lies they are told and the conditioning they recieve to
accept the world as it is.
Brecht's goal was revolution ,
liberation, a post-capitalist society of equal men and women
cooperating in a the fleeting idea of a worker's paradise. Not a whole
lot of laughter there, but an fascinating theory of how to get audiences
bothered by the lack of coin in their collective purse. 'Deadpool"
plays for laughs, and there are laughs aplenty ; it's an easily
handled device to achieve the "oh wow" effect. It does not, though,
warrant extended use. As much as Bugs Bunny spoke to the audience or
commented on the fact that he was an animated character in the process
of being drawn badly, his cartoons were short adventures in self-reflective avant gard, played for fast laughs, and then done with. "Deadpool"
is a full length movie driven by devices rather sufficiently
interesting role creations who have at least a modicum of complexity so
they might surprise when the plot merits a change of personality.
'Deadpool" has, in turn, a limited set of notes to play. It grates
before it's half way through. It's a gimmick that should be used
sparingly.
Admittedly "Deadpool", was clever and had real
laughs mixed in with the snarky giggles the producers were going for,
but it was tiresome after the half way point. The film, concerning a
mercenary/assassin with a heart of gold and a non stop stream of sarcasm
is paper-thin with regards to premise. The merc, Wade Wilson, finds out
he's in the advance stages of cancer . In a hopeless state and wanting
to continue to be with a recently found true love and soul mate, Wilson
agrees to undergo a radical therapy by a stranger that will not only
cure his cancer but give him meta human powers. The treatment,such as it
is, turns out to be torture in actual fact , the point of the
injections, incisions and radiations to force him to mutate. Wilson
mutates , of course, but he is horribly scarred, his sole consolation
being that he has an incredibly advanced healing factor that makes him
basically unkillable. It goes without saying that his already solid
fighting skills, honed when he was a government -paid agent of black
operations, are now off the scale, acrobatic to the degree comic book
fans adore.
Which would be fine, since comic
book stories needn't have a Jamesian complexity to be compelling; here ,
though, we find Deadpool, once in the costume and killing bad guys
between wise cracks, dirty puns and silly postures, relies on the old
post-modern trick of becoming self-reflective, which is to say that the
main character turns to the audience, the masked head bobbing as though
on spring with a kink in it, making remarks about the movie he's in,
other movies in this version of the Marvel Comics Universe, the
cheapness of the studio executives, even remarks about the number of
times the "4th wall" has been smashed . Repeat as needed, and repeat as
needed in a dizzying reliance of one flashback after another.
To
his credit director Tim Miller doesn't lose his place in all the
unfolding, but for all the bells, gunshots, explosions and Snyder-style
use of quick juxtapositions of slow motion and normal time to accentuate
the power of all of those explosions flying glass, beheadings and
on-the-beat snarkery coming from Deadpool's sheathed mouth makes you
yearn for a movie that didn't think it was so clever. Ryan Reynolds gets
his career saved from that looming fate of being known as the actor who
destroyed the hip factor in DC's Green Lantern character, although he
portrays the hyperactive Wilson with many of the same mannerisms. ticks,
bobs, gestures and verbal rhythms.
The pace of what he
delivers is faster, locked to one rapid fire pace; imagine the friends
you've actually had who couldn't stand pauses or extended silences in a
conversation who just kept on talking beyond interest or actual things
to talk about. It's not depth or range we're looking for in Deadpool. It's
just that the qualities that make him an appealing comic book anti-hero
don't travel very far in a full length feature, at least this one. Deadpool comes
up short. Half way through the film , in fact, I couldn't escape the
feeling that cast and crew lost enthusiasm for the project but soldiered
as dispirited employees do, showing up for the paycheck, not the mission.
