Tag: feminism

Watch Out — There’s Girls Driving

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We’re in the supermarket. It’s a weekday evening, and I dunno about you, but where I live, that means the grocery store is absolutely idiotic. Overcrowded, understaffed. People stalking you in their cars in hopes of a good parking spot, even though there are perfectly good spots at the end of the lot, which, if they’d just suck it up, park out there, and walk, would get them into the store and on with their idiotic days sooner. This one person — I swear to goodness — gets a cart in the front vestibule, moves through the doorway at an angle, then stops — blocking the entire entry/exit door — to root in her purse for something. It’s as if people have radar for the most inconvenient things they could possibly do, and then they do them, for the sheer hedonistic joy of blissful oblivion. Maybe they subconsciously feed on the pissoffs they’re sowing in the people all around them. (Man, that’s a good story idea. A semi-sentient lifeform who derives life energy, not from consuming or harming, but from irritating other creatures.)

Where was I? Right, the supermarket. On a weekday. *involuntary shudder*

We’re weaving our way through the aisles. Both of our kids are in the buggy, in that little plastic car thing that they bolt on to a normal shopping cart to give the kids the illusion of driving. My son is really too big for the cart, but that doesn’t matter — with the store as crowded as it is, letting the munchkins run free only makes us part of the problem, and we try whenever possible not to be part of the problem. Anyway, my kids are seated side-by-side in the pretend car, not screaming at each other (for once!).

We take the corner and almost mow down a kid who looks to be about three (plenty small enough to be in the cart, you know, NOT being part of the problem), with an open bag of goldfish in his grubby fingers and stains all over his shirt.

I don’t begrudge the stained shirt or the bag of goldfish straight off the shelf. I’m a parent too; I get it. But I heartily begrudge the kid running free and making me feel like a jerk for nearly running down a kid next to the canned corn. That’s on mom.

The kid stomps and stumbles to a halt as I put the brakes on the cart. The kid dashes around us as mom calls out, “careful kiddo, there’s girls driving!”

I had to stop breathing to stop my natural reaction. I dead-eyed and white-knuckled it down a couple of aisles before I started venting at my wife. Let’s just say you were dangerously close to reading about this incident on the police blotter instead of my humble internet abode.

“Careful. There’s girls driving.”

Where to begin?

First of all, she obviously mistook my son for a girl, which is, well, special. Usually it’s my daughter getting mistaken for a boy. Or maybe she mistook me for a girl — you know, my bald-on-top-hairy-everywhere-else self.

But more importantly, we’re just gonna go ahead and make the horrible joke that girls are bad drivers — even here when the girl is just pretend driving the car. Okay, that’s great.

And finally — she’s a woman. Making the no-thought-required, loaded-on-the-tip-of-the-tongue automatic joke that women can’t drive. To her son. Who is just on the threshold of understanding language itself. Sure, let’s go ahead and start filling his head with tired old stereotypes that will form the basis of his understanding of the world and the people in it. And just cap that with the mind-boggle that his own mother is debasing her own gender. In public. To strangers.

Just one more reason we usually shop on Sunday morning at eight AM.

Because everybody else is either at home or at church, and I can grab some cornflakes in peace.

 

Penny Dreadful’s Dreadful Ending

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We watched Penny Dreadful recently, a show that finished its run on Showtime a year or so ago and then washed up on the shores of Netflix. Of course, we began watching the series before reading the spoilers and reviews which suggested that the third (final) season was terrible and disappointing, but it starts off pretty gangbusters. Victorian heroes and heroines? Gothic stories, wicked violence, thrilling adventure? The perfect summer guilty pleasure, and so it was — we gobbled up two seasons in the space of about a week at the end of the summer.

Then we got about three episodes into season three and … just stopped. Partly because we ran out of time — when the summer goes for a family of educators, so goes the free time for binge-watching — and partly because the show lost its sense of what it was.

Here’s the part where I warn you that there are spoilers ahead for this show that’s over a year in the can, if spoilers are a thing you care about.

The first season was basically like the Avengers meets the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets all those dusty old novels you’ve thought about reading but never quite got around to: it mashes up Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll & Hyde and Dorian Gray, and turns them loose on the seedy, foggy streets of London. We end up with werewolves and gunslingers and vampires and witches stalking each other through back alleys and holy sharknado, is it a wild, dark, sexy ride.

The second season takes those heroes and fixes them firmly in orbit around the only female hero in the bunch, one Vanessa Ives. She’s a badass witch, and we learn just how she became so badass, and the perils of becoming so badass — she’s sought after by basically all the forces of darkness. More adventures. Frankenstein re-animates a woman for his monster and falls in love with her himself, but hey, whoops, turns out she won’t be owned, and she wreaks absolute hell in the streets of London herself.

That’s what made the show so satisfying: it was a bloodbath every episode, with a ragtag group of mercenaries fighting for their lives against the ultimate darkness, and the strongest, most fearsome, and most interesting characters in the series were the women.

Until season three. Wherein Vanessa, the most fearsome witch in the land, goes into a dark, existential struggle and gives in to become the bride of Dracula, and the aforementioned bride of Frankenstein falls into orbit with and becomes the diversion of Dorian Gray.

And it just becomes so … boring.

Well, we hate to leave a thing unfinished, and having sunk in the time to watch two seasons of what was once a pretty good show, we felt compelled to commit the time to finish the series out, to see if it turned itself around.

And it did … kind of.

There’s a sort of lovely duality to the final two episodes. The two women — Ives and the Bride — are both kept women, slaves to the men who have tamed them, bested them. But they respond differently: Vanessa gives up, stops fighting, and accepts that she can no longer fight against the forces that pursue her, even though she’s free to leave at any time, while the Bride fights with every breath, though she’s literally chained in a dungeon. Too much of it has escaped from memory, because I waited too long to put down these thoughts about it, but it’s all actually very poetic and sharp.

Except — and here’s the big spoiler — Vanessa kills herself at the end.

Which, I dunno, is a thing that makes sense, given the world that’s been built up around her. She has, after all, been pursued by the devil himself, and then by Dracula, and, due to the events of season three, been left by herself to stand against these advances. She sees no way out. She succumbs, and death and destruction ensue as the world’s most powerful witch and the father of vampires open the gates of hell.

But she kills herself. Or rather, she asks the man who loved her to kill her, and he does. And … that’s it. This woman who has been built up as the baddest, most indomitable spirit between heaven or hell? She sees no way out, gives up, and doesn’t even do it herself; she asks a man to kill her.

Horribly anticlimactic and disappointing.

Now, the Bride — she uses her cunning, plays upon her captor’s heartstrings, and escapes into the wild again. That’s an ending we can get behind. But the show isn’t about the Bride, not really. She’s a side-plot. If the show’s about anybody, it’s about Vanessa, and at the end, she gives up. And it’s hard to get behind that.

Not because she dies; a character choosing death can be valiant, if it’s for the right cause. And the argument can be made that Vanessa’s cause is valiant — the union between her and Dracula is literal poison for London, and eventually, for the world.

But she goes out weak. And I was led to believe, by everything that the show showed us up until the moment of her death, that this character was anything but weak.

That, I think, is why the show’s final season got panned. But it’s not like Showtime hasn’t seen horrible finales before — this is the network, after all, that turned one of the most compelling anti-heroes in recent memory into a reclusive lumberjack in his series finale. (Oh Dexter, we hardly knew ye.)

Tonight’s viewing? The first episode of Westworld. And initial impressions are double plus good.

Terrible Reviews: Ghostbusters (2016)

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So, the Ghostbusters reboot is out. And it’s gonna be hard to talk about the film without also talking about the six-hundred pound elephant in the room, which isn’t an elephant so much as it’s the manifestation of insecurities accumulated over decades.

There’s a bit of controversy around this film. I don’t know if you’ve heard. It has the dubious distinction of being the most downvoted trailer in film history, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t a thing until somebody who was determined to hate the movie went and counted to solidify his point. And, much like politics, the reasons for that largely depend on whom you ask.

Ask somebody who’s optimistic or indifferent about the reboot, and they’re likely to say the people downvoting the trailer and panning the film before it ever saw the light of day are antifeminist manbabies who, uh, tickle themselves to Pete Venkman getting slimed every night before they tuck in. These misogynists, they would have you believe, are just butthurt about the beloved franchise of their youth being repurposed with a female cast, and they are VERY VERY ANGRY ABOUT IT.

Ask somebody who’s not happy about the trailer, and they’ll blame it on any number of things: that the special effects look dopey, that the jokes aren’t funny, that the performances look flat, and the list goes on and on. Then there are those who insist that the film is “ruining their childhood” by remaking something that should never have been touched again, as if films, once they’re made, should get cast in bronze and locked in a hermetically sealed chamber until the rapture comes and Jesus himself uncorks them all for his own jolly consumption.

Then, of course, there are the actual misogynists, who literally say that it’s a bloody travesty for their beloved film to feature women in the lead roles.

Here’s the thing, though: It’s actually pretty damn tough to compare the 2016 Ghostbusters to the original, because they are not in any way the same film. They share the same conceptual core, the same nougaty center of “oddball scientists fighting ghosts and saving New York from the supernatural,” and pretty much diverge in every other way.

Whatever. Let’s get to the (spoiler-free!) review first, and we’ll get to the gender meta-analysis later. And I’ll go ahead and disclaim now that the original Ghostbusters is comfortably one of my top-5 films of all time. (And I didn’t hate this reboot.)

The Good:

Whatever else this film might be, it’s designed to be a summer blockbuster, which means action, some laughs, and a big, climactic showdown, probably one that causes millions of dollars in collateral damages and destroys most of a city.

And this film delivers that. The action sequences are pure eye-candy, with the redesigned but classic proton-packs slinging hot ghost death around willy-nilly, and a full load-out of new gizmos and doodads for the ‘Busters to show off. Proton Grenades, a Proton Shotgun, Proton Pistols … it’s all good and it’s all fun. (We’ll discuss the merits of this stuff later, but the visuals are top-notch.) McKinnon’s fight sequence with her Proton Pistols was a total wow-moment in the film, and her character is sure to be an audience favorite.

The comedy will be a sticking point for some people. The original had a dry, deadpan humor to it; this film is much more in the trenches. There’s slapstick. Poop and fart jokes. Ridiculousness. And a lot of people will hate that. But this film knows what it is, and that humor fits right in with the tone of this film, which is goofier than the original right from the start.

Then, the showdown. Buildings get smashed. Ghosts run amok. It’s pretty much what you’d expect, and it looks pretty great. I almost just typed that the final baddie was a bit ridiculous, but then I checked myself. We’re talking about a film in the original whose final showdown was with the StaPuft Marshmallow Man. So forget it. Last showdown is right in line with the tone of the film.

Finally, a note on the story: the main through-line of the story gets established a lot sooner in this film than in the original. Within the first twenty minutes or so, we see the guy (who will later become the big bad) messing around, acting weird, and his role is gradually fleshed out. In other words, we get an idea of what’s actually feeding the problem much earlier in this film than we did in the original (where we don’t really learn about Zuul or any of that until after the halfway point), and I think this film is better for it.

The Bad:

For me, the film has one critical flaw, and that’s the pacing. It’s forty-five minutes into the film (almost halfway) before the ‘Busters catch their first ghost, which is too long for my tastes. Those first forty-five are spent introducing characters, investigating hauntings, and in short, getting the team together. I felt like the introduction of the central two characters (McCarthy and Wiig) was entirely too drawn out, while the other two (McKinnon and Jones) get relatively little intro: then, all of a sudden, the four of them are together, on a gig, busting a ghost … and THEN the film takes off.

A related, but lesser, complaint is the development of these characters. Only one character really changes through the events of the film, and that’s Wiig’s — but the change doesn’t come at the climax of the film, rather it comes in the first thirty minutes. The film’s climax is therefore not transformative for any of the protagonists, which leaves a story wonk like me a little disappointed. Come to think of it, I could just as easily say the same of the original film, sooo….

Then there’s all those weapons I mentioned up above. Storywise, they’re a waste: the McKinnon character rolls them out, not because the proton packs are inefficient, but “just in case”. Every character gets one, and every character waves their altered boomstick around during the final showdown. They’re nice eye-candy, but that’s about it: in fact, the only non-proton-pack weapon that ends up having any story significance is a freakin’ Swiss Army Knife.

The Tough-to-pin-down:

Chris Hemsworth’s character is a big question mark for me. He’s so over-the-top stupid that it really stretches disbelief that the characters would allow him to stick around. Then again, he has some so-stupid-it’s-hilarious moments (the phone in the aquarium for example) which kinda make me rethink complaining about him. So he’s hard to nail down. Then again, my wife points out that he is the male equivalent of a worthless secretary hired just for her looks, so I guess that’s just my gender-blinders falling right into place.

Then there are the ghosts themselves. A lot of folks complained when the trailer came out that the effects on the ghosts looked lame or cheap. Hogwash, if you ask me. They look a little over-the-top, maybe, but this entire MOVIE is over-the-top. Still, the first ghost they catch is not so much a ghost as a freaking winged green devil monster. Maybe I’m nitpicking too much, but that seems less “ghost” and more “demon”. Regardless, in their first attempt to capture a ghost, they go up against this monstrous thing and they bring it down with relatively little trouble. It felt a bit like too big of a victory, too early, against too powerful an adversary.

Outside the Frame:

I said at the outset that you can’t really talk about this film without acknowledging the gender controversy. You might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned it at all (well, a little bit around the Hemsworth character). There’s a simple reason for that: gender couldn’t be less of a factor in the movie. Which kind of makes this film the height of a feminist accomplishment.

How’s that, then? Easy. The protagonists are women, but it doesn’t matter that they’re women. The film would work just as well with the original cast of Spengler, Stantz, Venkman and Zeddemore as it does with these four ladies, as it would with any four male actors from today, as it would with any permutation of players and genders. That’s because these characters are not strong female characters, they are simply strong characters who happen to be female. There is no chest-beating, bra-burning moment of “look what we women have accomplished! See how we have thrown off the patriarchy!” No, these are simply capable women, going about their business, kicking ass and saving the day. They don’t need to prove how “feminist” they are. They just do it.

Then, there’s the fact that the film is a reboot (not a remake). Obviously it will be compared to the original, even though to do so is an exercise in futility. This will never be the same as the original, which means that the haters crying that the movie got remade at all will never be wrong. Still, the movie pays homage to the original in the form of cameos from the original cast and callbacks to well-known gags from the original. You still have the hilarious moment when they crank up the “unlicensed nuclear accelerator” in a backpack for the first time, and the other characters slowly edge away. Rehashed again is Bill Murray’s yank-the-tablecloth-off-a-set-table gag that he can’t resist, only this time it’s Kirsten Wiig being dragged out of a restaurant by security, grabbing the tablecloth as a last resort. Some will claim that these callbacks show the film is unoriginal, that it’s simply scavenging the corpse of the first film. Nonsense. They are little head-nods to fans of the original, they are winks-and-nudges to the folks who recognize them for what they are.

The Verdict:

The fact is, this is a perfectly ordinary film. It’s not going to change your life. It’s a good time with some funny ladies and some pretty excellent explosions and light shows along the way. There’s nothing earth-shattering going on here, outside of the sheer balls it took to retool the original so completely. That said? It isn’t a bad film. Not on its own merits and not by dint of re-inventing a film that, truth be told, probably didn’t need to be reinvented.

But when did “need” have anything to do with the movies being made in Hollywood? This is a perfectly good film with a lot of controversy around it. The fact is, your experience of the film will almost certainly depend on the baggage you bring to it. If you come to the film determined to compare it to the original, you’ll be disappointed. This film isn’t trying to improve upon the original; it’s trying to spin the yarn anew for a younger generation. If you come to the film with a more or less blank slate, you’ll have the chance to enjoy a visually delightful take on a true classic.

I’ll reiterate here something I said when Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, and the purists were jawing about “IT’S NOT A SEQUEL IT’S JUST A REMAKE,” “YOU CAN NEVER IMPROVE UPON THE ORIGINAL HUR HUR HUR”. Which is: at the end of the day, Ghostbusters is not just a film, it’s a franchise. Movies, TV shows, video games, toys, motherfargoing Ecto-Coolers. And that franchise? However much you may love it? However much it may have influenced you in your youth? It owes you nothing. Star Wars owes you nothing, and Ghostbusters owes you nothing. If you loved the original and think any new take on it is an abomination? Well, for yourself, you’re right, and this film isn’t for you. But if you are willing to take a chance on something a little different, a little less heteronormative (and I just broke the word bank with that word), then hey, holy sharknado, you might have a little fun along the way.

Finally, just look at this viral photo of Kirsten Wiig greeting some young fans at the red carpet:

If the looks on those little girls’ faces don’t make this film worthwhile, then I don’t know what does.

All images are the property of Columbia Pictures.

The Mis-Education of the Stanford Rapist (We Are All Teachers)

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I didn’t want to write about this Stanford case, mostly because I don’t want to think about it too much. In particular, I don’t want to think about it for two reasons:

  1. It is only by the ludicrous caprice of luck that the women in my life haven’t been touched by the poison of rape or rape culture (that I know of!). A friend of mine on facebook put it rather succinctly (and I’m paraphrasing): It’s like a minefield. Suppose we lined up 100 women at a college or university and started walking across the field. I make it across, but turn around to see that 20 women didn’t make it, and are now lying in pieces across the field. And the truly horrifying thing is that I did nothing different to cross the field than the ones that didn’t make it.
  2. The rapist (and that’s the only way I’ll refer to him here, because that’s what he is) is (apart from the rape I mean) not so very different from guys that I went to school with, if not myself. I mean, I got good grades. I wasn’t athletic, but I was somewhat talented and well-enough liked in my circle of friends. I was a suburban white kid. Not particularly affluent, but I can’t remember wanting for much in my childhood. Point is, I could easily have been friends with someone like the rapist and not known the difference. There, but for the grace of etc…

Unfortunately, as I see the outrage growing across social media, and the poignant and plaintive sentiments arising from the women in my circle, I’m realizing that this problem is bigger than a Stanford rapist. It’s cultural. And because I have a daughter (and a son, for that matter), it’s an issue that’s going to have to be dealt with in my house.

And deal with it we must. There’s something broken in our culture, and by extension, in ourselves. It’s so easy for the rapist’s father to say “this is not the son I raised; he made a mistake.” Regardless of how tone-deaf his letter was (and I want to circle back around to the issue of platforms and how you use them in a later post), his sentiment was basically what the sentiment of any parent would be. Look at the mothers and fathers of criminals of all stripes, and you will see the same statement bubbling up like primordial gas from a primeval swamp: we had no idea. But we have to have an idea. Regardless of intent, the actions of the father and mother (or maybe, their lack of action) played a role in turning their son into a rapist. Just Alyssa had a rather good post about this that’s worth a read. But parents have to know what their kids are doing, and they have to be aware of the impact that their actions will have on their kids. As much as his dad and his friends protest that the rapist is “not that sort of person” and he “just made a mistake,” it’s hard to imagine a perfectly straight-laced kid going straight to sexual assault as a first transgression. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not just the fault of the rapist.

Another friend of mine wrote about how she came to realize that men were a thing she had to protect herself against, a thing she had to be wary of. And it made me realize that conversations I thought were a very long way off indeed are perhaps not so very far off as I would prefer. Because the time will come when she has to protect herself — hopefully not from an active attacker, but certainly from getting into a situation where a would-be attacker crosses the line from upstanding Stanford student to rapist. And I want her to be prepared when that time comes.

But that’s only half of the equation. In fact, it’s not even half. Because while women are the victims of rape, they are not the source of it. Rape is a male problem with female consequences. Which means that, perhaps even more so than teaching my daughter how to protect herself, I have to teach my son how to treat women so that they don’t have to protect themselves. The Stanford rapist did not become a rapist just because he had a few drinks. He became a rapist because of a lifetime of entitlement and the enabling of parents and peers and an ignoring of warning signs along the way.

In a way, he is, sadly, a victim as well — but not in the way his dad thinks. Not as a promising young man whose future has been ruined by the evils of alcohol and college culture and an unfortunate 20 minutes behind a dumpster. He’s a victim of those people who should have taught him better, should have steered him onto a better path miles and years before he encountered his victim behind a dumpster. He is a victim of his parents and his friends and his culture that trained him to think he was entitled to whatever he wanted and that he would get away with whatever mistakes he made.

We have to educate our young women — but I have no doubt that the victim in this case was educated. No defense is perfect. Even the best-defended fortress will fall under constant attack — and make no mistake, our young women are under constant attack in this day and age. No, far more important than educating our young women is educating our young men. The best defense is a good offense, so they say; and the best defense for our young women is creating a society in which they no longer have to know how to defend themselves.

We have work to do. Parents of young men have work to do. Teachers of young men have work to do. Friends of young men have work to do. Aunts and uncles, big brothers and sisters, employers, pastors, coaches … if there is a young man in your life who has ever looked to you for an answer, you have work to do.

The justice system isn’t going to do it for us. Government isn’t going to do it for us. God certainly isn’t going to do it for us.

If we want this to change — if we really want our young women to be safe — the change starts in our own houses. It starts with us.

Terrible Reviews: Deadpool

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I can’t say I was dying to see Deadpool. It wasn’t even necessarily on my list of films to check out when they hit DVD. But it was Valentine’s Day weekend, my wife and I had the kids out of the house for a few days, and we needed something to do in public that made us feel like adults.

Short of going bar-hopping and ending with our heads in the gutters, there’s not a ton of stuff for a couple of crazy kids like my wife and I to do without driving to downtown Atlanta, which is not a thing we undertake unless we must. We decided to check out the latest Marvel offering instead. The reasoning went thusly:

(One of us, can’t remember who): I guess we could go to a movie.

Wife: What’s out that’s worth seeing?

Me: I dunno. I’ve heard interesting things about Deadpool.

Wife: What’s that?

Me: The new Marvel superhero movie. It’s about a guy who basically can’t die or something, I think.

Wife: Who’s in it?

Me: Ryan Reynolds.

Wife: SURE WE CAN SEE THAT

And so we ended up in a packed house the day before Valentine’s Day seeing the most buzzworthy film since Star Wars. And we really should have done some more research first. Not because we couldn’t handle the film, but because we weren’t properly prepared for it. You know how you like to have an idea that it’s fifteen degrees out before you crack the front door? Not because you can’t handle a blast of cold air to the privates or anything like that (what, you don’t open your front door naked in the morning?), but you want to know what you’re stepping into.

Deadpool is not for the faint of heart.

Here’s a film that knows exactly what it is, and exactly what it’s trying to do. It’s raunchy, irreverent, self-aware, and it pulls no punches. There’s gratuitous and excessive filthy language. There’s boobs and butts and … let’s just say unconventional sex. There’s straight-up murder perpetrated by the “hero” (though he does disclaim himself as “not a hero” pretty immediately). And I have no problem with any of those things! I just wasn’t prepared for it as I bought the ticket — I hadn’t even known it was rated R.

Which is entirely my own fault. And I do have some thoughts about Marvel suddenly releasing such a balls-to-the-wall, potentially offensive movie like this, when most of its product lives squarely in the PG-13 arena, but that’s a post for another time. For today, we’re here for the review, so let’s dive in.

This is the part where the review gets spoilery, so be forewarned. I’ll also disclaim that I know nothing about the character or the story outside of the film. I don’t read comic books. So if I’m missing out on some of the inside jokes … well, whatever.

What’s Good:

The writing and the central construct. Deadpool (the character) knows he’s starring in a movie. He regularly breaks the fourth wall to speak with the audience. He knows our expectations for the superhero movie we’re watching and he takes great joy in subverting those expectations. This little device could easily turn campy were it a thing the film simply dabbled in, but the writers don’t dabble — they throw us into the ocean. The film pretends to be about a guy who finds himself imbued with superpowers who must then go on to right a great injustice and save his girl into the mix, but it’s really about the sharp-witted protagonist taking us on a wild ride and messing with us every step of the way. It’s different, it’s fresh, and it works.

Feminism! One of the film’s central heroes is a young recruit at the X-Men academy (yeah, it’s a crossover, I didn’t know that either). She’s not gorgeous, she’s not troubled and fighting for revenge, she’s not that blightedly cliched Strong Female Character. She’s a grouchy teenager who’s a lot more interested in her phone than in saving the world; she just also happens to kick a serious amount of ass when she jolly well decides to feel like it. Likewise, one of the antagonists sort of fits into the same mold. Essentially she’s a lab assistant to the big bad, which lends itself to a certain set of traits by default. She’s nastyish and unsettling, but it’s not like, “oh, this is a woman who’s filling the role of a sadistic torturer,” rather it’s just “That character is messed up … I wonder what horrible thing she’s going to do next.” And then she ends up beating the hell out of a dude made of metal — with her fists.

So many films looking to get good female characters in there (as well they should) feel the need to justify every aspect of the character. This is why she’s strong, this is why she’s not afraid of men, this is where she still gets together with her girlfriends to get good and sloshed on a weeknight after she’s done saving the world. And that’s fine — but it often comes across as too much. Paper Towns was a good (or rather, abominable) example of this. They worked so hard to make the central female compelling and interesting that it all felt forced and ridiculous, ultimately stretching my credulity until I wanted to use the DVD as a drink coaster rather than finish the second half of the film. (I still finished the movie, though, because apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.) The women of Deadpool — with one notable exception — just are who they are, and that makes them so much more compelling.

The Not-So-Good:

(Lack of) Feminism! While the film’s peripheral women are outstanding, the central woman is a big swing-and-a-miss. She falls into the “Cool Girl” trap as outlined in Gone Girl: she’s that too-perfect combination of everything guys want. She’s quick with a geek-culture reference, down-to-earth enough to knock back beers with the guys, and just freaky enough in the sack to make you a little uncomfortable. Ryan Reynolds’s character remarks at one point something to the effect of: “did I create you with a computer?” This is maybe a little bit self-referential on the part of the writers, but still. The film’s climax happens because she essentially gets stuffed into a fridge. For a film which seems so savvy about the genres it’s toying with, the character is a bland disappointment.

Where’d that character go? The aforementioned bad ass sidekick woman literally just disappears from the film in its closing moments. One moment she’s fighting with the X-Men, then she gets beaten while Deadpool is up finishing off the Big Bad, and the next moment the film is over and my wife and I looked at each other and said, “but what happened to what’s-her-name?” (I saw the movie a week ago, okay? I’ve forgotten ninety percent of it.) It’s not like she vanished in a ooh-I-wonder-what-she’s-going-to-do-in-the-sequel way, it’s more like the filmmakers forgot to resolve this character in any way whatsoever. An unfortunately jarring note at the end of the film.

It’s Kinda Boring. To be fair, the film is much more about the wise-cracking, fourth-wall-breaking, not-your-average-superhero taking you on a ride than it is about the “superhero story” itself. Problem is, the film is still centered around that “superhero story.” Average guy acquires superpowers. Superpowers are awesome but they kinda ruin the guy’s social life. Superhero must find a way to balance superpowers with the life he wants to lead, and oh yeah, has to deal with a villain who threatens to ruin his personal life further. The tropes are stretched awfully thin, and again, in a film which really delivers in some other areas, for the plot to be so picked-over is a disappointment.

The Verdict:

Shortcomings aside, the movie is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s witty and sharp, and pokes fun at itself and its entire genre with hilarious abandon. If you like superhero movies, and you can stomach the f-word in large quantities and more than a few dick jokes and other perversions, it’s worth checking out.

Just don’t take your kids.

To the best of my knowledge, all images above are the property of 20th Century Fox.