Weekend Movies: Dead in the Water

Some of this Valentine’s Day weekend’s new movies are getting much more buzz than they deserve.

You’ve seen Ryan Reynolds try to quip his way through three bad comic book movies by now (‘Blade Trinity‘, ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine‘, ‘Green Lantern‘), only to miserably fail each time. With the help of Marvel geeks and a lot of buzz surrounding a leaked pre-viz sequence, Reynolds smooth-talked his way into getting a fourth chance. Although technically a piece of Marvel property, ‘Deadpool‘ is one of the few remaining comic characters that Marvel Studios doesn’t own the movie rights to. Made by 20th Century Fox, the film takes the foul-mouthed, quick-healing and pain-free antihero and places him in a highly R-rated version of the ‘X-Men’ world. With nothing to lose, the sword- and gun-wielding vengeful character goes after a whole slew of cannon fodder bad guys. T.J. Miller also rambles his way through a co-starring role alongside Gina Carano and a bunch of no-name actors. Both the fans’ word-of-mouth and critical reviews are mostly positive, but I won’t let Ryan Reynolds fool me into getting excited for it.

Just as Fox appears to be doing with ‘Deadpool’, Paramount is overcompensating with the ridiculous amount of advertising for ‘Zoolander 2‘. It took four seasoned writers to script this sequel, but after watching it you’d assume that it was written as fan-fiction by one guy who’s stuck living in 2001. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson reprise their roles as the pair of airheaded male supermodels. This time, the plot is so meandering, contrived and convoluted that I honestly can’t even provide you with a short synopsis here. As if the story wasn’t bad enough, only making matters worse is the fact that more emphasis was put into writing in cameos than writing new jokes. I can count on one hand the times that this supposed comedy actually made me laugh. The original ‘Zoolander‘ made me laugh plenty, but ‘Zoolander 2′ is a joyless mess.

It wouldn’t be Valentine’s weekend without the obligatory chick flick, but this year’s skews on the anti-romance side. After Nicholas Sparks’ latest movie flopped last weekend, it’s likely that ‘How to Be Single‘ will have a successful opening. As the standards of romance and relationships change with the times, a group of lonely single ladies try to find happiness on their own. Rebel Wilson, Dakota Johnson, Alison Brie and Leslie Mann lead this nearly two-hour R-rated comedy.

Michael Moore’s controversial documentaries once stirred audiences, but his latest, ‘Where to Invade Next‘, failed to impress so much that it was pulled from the 2015 Oscar season and repositioned to February. His new doc satirically explores what specific countries might have to offer if the United States decided to invade them.

3 comments

  1. Pedram

    “Both the fans’ word-of-mouth and critical reviews are mostly positive, but I won’t let Ryan Reynolds fool me into getting excited for it”

    So, are you prejudiced against Ryan Reynolds or something? Whatever your opinion on the aforementioned comic book movies he was in, he wasn’t the reason they were badly perceived. In fact, I’d say he was one of the highlights of each one of those films.

    • Luke Hickman
      Author

      I like Reynolds quite a bit, actually – but when he’s left to run his mouth for the entire duration of a movie, it overstays its welcome. And considering the trailers ONLY show him quipping away, my prejudgement of the movie isn’t unfounded.

      With today being a holiday, I caught a late afternoon showing. ‘Deadpool’ was okay. Not great, but fun enough. I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again because it’s genuinely a one-trick pony, but I don’t regret seeing it. If/when they start blending it with the actual X-Men, it ought to get fun.

  2. Deadpool was freaking fantastic, hilarious, great action and a good origin story to boot. It connected nice to the X-Men universe and it trashed so many things about them as well, the insider jokes were great in this thing and it deserves the praise its getting, it already has the highest opening day for an R rated movie now and they are talking about this pulling in 130 million this weekend, thats nuts for an R rated anything really, I had so much fun with this movie was laughing just about the whole time. Reynolds IS Deadpool, this was the role he’s made for and I’m glad he got to do it and that FOX actually made a GREAT superhero movie that was completely different from anything most people have seen so far 🙂

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