It’s pretty much universally agreed that DEADPOOL is the biggest surprise of the year, right?  The movie obliterated every box office record it could reach: for R-rated movies, for February, for Presidents’ Day weekend, and for a whole bunch of other things over the weekend, and it deserves every dime it made.  I have never been a fan of the character, particularly, and didn’t get hooked on the idea of going until the trailers and the ads made two things clear:

1. That the people making the movie got the character;
2. That everyone involved seemed to be having the time of their lives.

Actors enjoying themselves can get a movie or a TV show a long way with me.  I can think of three examples on TV right now: it seems clear that the cast on Flash is having the time of their lives.  Same with Sleepy Hollow, and while I’ve only caught a few episodes so far, I’m getting the same vibe from Supergirl as well.  Deadpool has the same vibe to it.  This movie is a whole lot of things– gory, profane, borderline pornographic at times (the sight of Morena Baccarin nailing Ryan Reynolds from behind with a strap-on will not leave my head anytime soon,) hilarious, and– believe it or not– touching, but what it is more than anything else is an insane amount of fun.

I was expecting a lot of those things from this film; what I wasn’t expecting was just how much heart it has.  I knew from the trailers that Baccarin’s character was eventually going to be kidnapped by the bad guys and that Deadpool was going to get her back, blah, blah, blah.  What I wasn’t expecting was how real and how important they managed to make their relationship despite the fact that they’re probably boning for literally half of their screen time.  I may or may not have wiped an involuntary tear away during their reunion at the end of the movie.

(That strap-on scene?  Believe it or not, it’s not just a throwaway joke.  It tells you things about these characters.  It’s important for the story.  I’m completely serious.)

Toss in a cast that is solid from top to bottom– even Colossus, who was portrayed by three different people (one face, one voice, and a Frenchman on stilts for mocap) was a great character– and tremendously well-shot action sequences where everything’s well-lit and you can tell where the characters are and what they’re doing at all times and you’ve got yourself a hell of a movie.  Shit, the fight between Colossus and Gina Carano’s Angel Dust at the end of the movie is probably the best “two super-strong brutes” fight I’ve ever seen on-screen.  Baccarin’s Vanessa holds her own against Reynolds and against the bad guys, the scenes between Deadpool and Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead are fantastic, and even the relationships between Deadpool and his elderly blind roommate and comic-relief best friend are fully sketched-out.  Shit, the taxi driver gets character development.  All this in a movie that comes in at comfortably under two hours.

I mean, make no mistake: this is the hardest R movie I’ve seen in a while, although that’s partially a function of the fact that I see virtually nothing but superhero movies nowadays.  Do not take little kids to see this, and if you’re not going to like a movie with lots of people being sworded to death and anal sex jokes and “motherfucker” probably being 5% of the dialogue all by itself, you’re not gonna have a good time.  But if you’re one of those people I feel like there’s a good chance you stopped reading my blog a long time ago, so maybe you’re not seeing this anyway.

So.  Yeah.  Go see Deadpool.  No shit: I might have liked it more than I liked Force Awakens.  I know, call me a heretic.  But it’s that good.