Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
[Author's note: I've done my best to avoid them, but two mild casting Spoilers will be forthcoming. Proceed with caution.]
Mind you, I'm not suggesting that anyone would do this. But if you were to make a drinking game out of the experience of Marvel's and director/co-writer Shawn Levy's Deadpool & Wolverine, here's a list of prompts to absolutely avoid – unless, that is, you want the game to end with one of your players rushed to the ER.
1) Drink every time Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool, masked or not, directly addresses the camera.
2) Drink every time Deadpool references the movie as a movie.
3) Drink every time Deadpool references the off-screen lives of those involved with the movie.
4) Drink every time Deadpool references another comic-book franchise, character, or storyline.
5) Drink every time Hugh Jackman's Wolverine says to Deadpool, “Shut the f--- up.”
6) Drink every time characters survive seemingly fatal injuries.
7) Drink every time blood spatters the camera lens.
8) Drink every time a Dad Rock song plays on the soundtrack.
9) Drink every time the action stops for the arrival of an unexpected guest star.
10) Drink every time Deadpool and Wolverine walk, run, or jump in slow motion.
Then again, engaging in even one of these challenges would make the average viewer pass out, and for some of us, unconsciousness might be preferable to sitting through the smug, repetitive Deadpool & Wolverine in its entirety.
Look, I get it. “It's a comic-book flick! Just have fun!” Lots of patrons at my screening were clearly having the time of their lives. And I did chuckle on occasion. On three occasions, actually: at a very early dig at “downtown North Dakota”; at a very late reaction to the ugliest dog on Earth; and, mid-film, at the marble-mouthed Cajun patois of an actor whose identity, like those of so many in the film, shouldn't be revealed. (Screw it. SPOILER ALERT! It was Channing Tatum.)
I'll also readily concede that the movie is abjectly Not for Me, despite moderately liking 2016's Deadpool and quite enjoying 2018's Deadpool 2. After six years spent away from this character – a period in which, perhaps tellingly, I exited my 40s and the majority of my 50s – I am now (mostly) so over superhero entertainments, multiverse sagas, and Ryan Reynolds that the prospect of two hours of pummeling ȕber-violence and meta-snark filled me with dread. I fully expected to be exhausted. But I wasn't. From beginning to end, I was simply bored.
When I say that nothing happens in D&W, that's obviously an exaggeration, as there's incident aplenty. Characters routinely zip between universes and timelines. There are numerous scenes of mass onslaughts and CGI spectacle and mano-a-mano slugfests. There's a plot, sort of, concerning yet another ultimate villain (Emma Corin, acting as if in a different picture) and a subplot that routinely requires Jackman to get teary-eyed. Beyond all that, whenever Reynolds is on screen, you're guaranteed an average ratio of at least six jokes per minute, and that's probably low-balling it. (Insert Deadpool wisecrack about “low-balling.”) Yet unlike every other comic-book adventure I've seen, even the previous Deadpools, this one seems absurdly dedicated to nothingness – or rather, to the idea that nothing means anything. The effects may be gross, but it's the film's mindset that's truly grim.
You know the deal when you enter a Deadpool movie, as Deadpool/Wade/Reynolds wastes no time reminding us that we are, in fact, at a Deadpool movie. In the past, though, those reminders landed as occasional, usually witty pop-ins – throwaways designed to randomly lighten the mood. Here, every single scene that our lead appears in finds him or the film itself delivering inside-baseball commentary, whether on the Disney/Fox merger or the rumored casting of certain figures or the genre clichés that are aggressively mocked before, ultimately, being embraced. And a number of the verbal and visual toss-offs are legitimately clever and unanticipated. (One bait-and-switch involving a former Avenger is damned near priceless.) Yet for two hours, we're instructed to not take anything we see or hear seriously. And what, may I ask, is the point of that? Why give Wade and Logan deeply sentimental arcs if we're not supposed to be invested in them? Why make Hugh Jackman – who, weirdly, starts to seem like an afterthought – emote his butt off if the movie is just going to dismiss his efforts?
We're accustomed to world-ending narratives that prove to be no big whoop. Levy and company, however, tell us not to care about anything or anyone in D&W, because it's all meaningless anyway. The multiverses have made character deaths a non-issue. Actors seemingly retired from the canon can evidently be lured back for the right price. Jackman's and (SPOILER ALERT!) Jennifer Garner's failed marriages can be used as punchlines – because why not? Levy's film is gutless, and supremely dull, because it doesn't believe in anything beyond sarcasm. It's the cinematic equivalent of a playground bully who relentlessly taunts others but would likely run off crying if the tables were turned. (Given the frequent references to the Avengers, with Deadpool desperate to join their ranks, why is Jackman's real-life divorce turned into a joke while Reynolds' real-life divorce from Scarlett “Black Widow” Johansson is ignored?)
For a long time, I thought the most tiresome scene in superhero movies was the one in which inevitable allies spend long minutes beating the crap out of each other. D&W proves there's something even more soul-draining: the sight of invincible, regenerative inevitable allies spending long minutes beating the crap out of each other. That time-wasting excursion gets replayed twice here, yet there's really no end to the bits that, for my money, ran on too long: the tortured explanations behind the logic-defying multiverse plotting; the hammy deviousness of Matthew Macfadyen's Time Variance Authority agent; the Oldboy homage demonstrating that Shawn Levy is no Park Chan-wook; the sound-and-fury climax that lasted forever after Deadpool promised us they were wrapping things up. I'm happy that the fans whom Deadpool & Wolverine is in service to are having such a blast. It's been five months since the last big-screen-comic-book event, and that was Madame Web; they deserve their good time. I just wish that, for all the laughter, the loudest cackle ringing in my ears didn't seem to be that of the movie laughing at us.
THE FABULOUS FOUR
Ah, the aging-female buddy comedy. After The Golden Girls became an '80s smash, you'd think we would've been treated to decades of these things on the big screen. But they're actually a relatively recent phenomena, and outings in the genre have ranged from the delightful highs of Book Club and 80 for Brady to the crushing lows of Book Club: The Next Chapter and May's Summer Camp. I regret to say that our latest entry, director Jocelyn Moorhouse's The Fabulous Four, leans more in the latter direction – and by “leans more,” I mean “jumps in with two feet and a Kegel ball.” But Moorhouse's film may be more disappointing than others of its type, because it's easy to see how, with very little effort or invention, this lackluster comedy might've instead emerged as a lackluster but far more diverting musical comedy for a quartet of talented ladies of a certain age. I know theatres, specifically dinner theatres, whose operators would kill to have a song-filled Fabulous Four on their schedules.
Ann Marie Allison's and Jenna Milly's script casts Bette Midler as the fun-loving Marilyn, who, widowed after 48 years of wedded bliss, becomes addicted to TikTok and a guy she met at the DMV, their whirlwind romance leading to a hastily arranged wedding in Key West. She naturally wants her three besties from youth there for the ceremony: Sheryl Lee Ralph's Kitty, the laid-back one, who has a lucrative edibles business and a disapproving, religiously devout daughter; Megan Mullally's Alice, the horny one, who's a studio singer with a penchant for young male flesh; and Susan Sarandon's Lou, the stick-in-the-mud one, who stopped speaking to Marilyn when the latter stole the former's boyfriend nearly half a century ago. You can imagine what happens next, and probably with more imagination than the screenplay ever does. Booze and gummies are consumed and abused. Wacky physical hijinks ensue, including the most dismal example of green-screen parasailing ever conceived. (And I witnessed Sebastian Maniscalo's attempt in About My Father.) Old hurts are laid bare. Fractious relationships are mended. New romances, chiefly Lou's with Bruce Greenwood's friendly bar owner, blossom. And every so often, songs are sung. If only more songs had been sung.
For the record, The Fabulous Four is almost startlingly unfunny, its low-rent shenanigans sometimes going so far as to defy belief, as when Kitty fails to recognize her adult grandson – who's only hidden by a masquerade-ball mask – until she notices the birthmark on his ass cheek. (The movie takes minimal advantage of its “R” rating, but at least comes close to justifying it here.) Even on a superficial level, I can't say that I was ever emotionally engaged, either, considering that the outcomes to every point of strife are apparent five seconds after these hindrances are introduced. Really, the only thing Moorhouse's movie has going for it (beyond the warmly photographed Florida locales) is the cast – and I practically wanted to cry at the sad misuse of this particular team of legends. Midler, it should go without saying, is a musical powerhouse. Ralph co-starred in the original New York production of Dreamgirls. Mullally appeared in Broadway's Grease, Young Frankenstein, and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. And Sarandon? She was Janet in The Rocky Horror Show, for Pete's sake. What are they doing in this thing not singing together for 90 solid minutes?!
Every once in a while, Moorhouse seems to recognize her grave mistake. In that godawful parasailing sequence, about 20 seconds are spent with Midler, Ralph, and Mullally crooning an a cappella portion of “I Can See Clearly Now,” and I grinned so hard I thought my face might crack. Some time later, Mullally delivers lovely, lively vocals opposite what you may presume is a wax-figure animatronic, but which the credits indicate was actually Michael Bolton. (Apparently, the singer was suffering from a since-removed brain tumor during filming, and if that was the cause of his eerily stiff, lifeless presence, Moorhouse should've simply cut this narratively inconsequential duet – Bolton looks distractingly unwell.) And at the finale, all semblance of the film's prior realism (ha!) is ditched in favor of Midler and Ralph going to town on a full-length rendition of “I Can See Clearly,” with the dazed-looking wedding-reception extras recruited for what might be the most awkward, unmotivated climactic dance sequence in movie history. (Sarandon, who never gets the opportunity to sing, appears to survive the debacle by hugging a cat and pretending she isn't there.) I'm not sure if 12 or 15 more sequences like these would've helped The Fabulous Four or, more likely, turned it into unintentional camp for the ages. Better that, though, than the bummer we're stuck with.
SHINE ON: THE FORGOTTEN SHINING LOCATION
Because I hate ending my weekly reviews with the indication that there's nothing new that's remotely worth seeing (although Deadpool & Wolverine's $205-million domestic intake would certainly indicate otherwise), allow me a few paragraphs on the one debuting entertainment I fully enjoyed over the weekend. It's titled Shine On: The Forgotten Shining Location. Directed by Paul King, it was released on YouTube this past Friday, July 26, which would've been Stanley Kubrick's 96th birthday. It's only 25 minutes long – shorter than a broadcast-TV sitcom with commercials. And all it involves are recollections from the filming of Kubrick's 1980 horror classic, along with the film's art director Les Tomkins, producer Jan Harlan, and Kubrick's daughter Katharina taking a tour of the long-neglected Overlook Hotel sets that were presumably destroyed, but turned out to be haunting the confines of England's Elstree Studios.
Fellow Shining obsessives, you won't want to miss it – not because the documentary short is essential, but because it's such a massive smile. Interviewees Tomkins, Harlan, and Katharina Kubrick are lucid and appealing, and after nearly 45 years of Shining lore, they even come through with occasional insights that feel remarkably fresh. (Regarding Kubrick's penchant for dozens upon dozens of takes for even the simplest of shots, Tomkins recalls the director saying, “You've got all of these expensive actors and all of these expensive sets, and the cheapest part of all of this is film running through the camera. So why not film it?”)
But the real fun comes after the trio enters Elstree and starts rambling around the dusty, barren locales. Cinematographer Jon Kassell's perfectly positioned camera elegantly juxtaposes the wanderings against scenes from the movie, the lighthearted, routinely awed conversation suddenly morphing into, say, Dick Hallorann giving Wendy Torrance a tour of the kitchen facilities, or Wendy dragging husband Jack toward the walk-in freezer and locking him in. Over the weeks since Shelly Duvall's July 11 passing, I've found myself missing her more than I expected, and Shine On is a lovely, if brief, reunion with the actor, as well as with Scatman Crothers, and Jack Nicholson, and Danny Lloyd, and those insanely creepy twins, and the entire wonder of Kubrick's masterpiece. At less than a half-hour, King's online lark obviously lacks the scope of 2013's gonzo Shining-fanatic doc Room 237. But the scant run time does have its benefits. Who, beyond Jack Torrance, wants to be trapped in the Overlook forever?
