With his puppy-like eyes and winning smile, Ryan Reynolds makes an ideal wise-cracking antihero in a film that’s half superhero drama, half bawdy sex comedy. But that’s also where Deadpool fails. Reynolds’ Wade Wilson is funny and appealing as a human, but his fancy red get-up has no mouth and blank white space for eyes. As the mutant Deadpool, he’s just a charmless pottymouth. The smart-alecky zingers lapse into repetitive butt sex and dick jokes, peppered with random references to the rest of the Marvel universe. (X-Men creator Stan Lee makes a cameo as a strip club DJ.) There’s also an inexplicable abundance of gay cultural references. I did like the Dorothy Zbornak tank top, at least.
