Tag: Leslie Uggams

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Smug, tiresome gags underpin a shallow piece of fan-pandering that mocks fan-pandering

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Emma Corrin (Cassandra Nova), Matthew Macfadyen (Mr Paradox), Morena Baccarin (Vanessa Carlysle), Rob Delaney (Peter Wisdom), Leslie Uggams (Blind Al), Aaron Stanford (Pyro), Dafne Keen (Laura), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan)

Deadpool is Marvel Jesus. It’s a joke in the film, but it’s also kinda true. The MCU has struggled in the past few years and it’s hoping the raw-and-ready sociopathic, fourth-wall-breaking merc-with-the-mouth can give its fortunes a jolt. In terms of money take, Deadpool & Wolverine is, I guess, going to do that. In terms of creativity and imagination, we’re still circling the toilet bowl, but hey at least Feige and co are doing it while clutching a wadge of greenbacks.

You say Deadpool’s constant fourth-wall leaning jokes ain’t really funny and that all they do is point out (and neutralising criticism in advance) weaknesses in plot and writing: but that toilet bowl gag was a bit of a turd right?

Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has been rejected by the Avengers on Earth-616 “The Sacred Timeline” (otherwise known as the one the MCU happens in) and returns to his friends on Earth-10005 (otherwise known as the 20^th Century Fox X-Men Franchise timeline) to retire and work as a used-car salesman. Until he is grabbed by the Time Variance Authority and informed by Mr Paradox (Matthew MacFadyen) his universe is being erased, due to the death of its Anchor Being Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in Logan. Deadpool’s only chance to save his universe is to find a new Wolverine, eventually pulling in “the worst Wolverine” who failed to save his world. Both are banished to “The Void”, a resting place for “erased” heroes from earlier timelines (aka cancelled movie franchises) run by Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the insane sister of Charles Xavier.

You made that tough to follow on purpose, you absolute bell-end. Ain’t you funny!

Flipping heck. If you think that sounds like a lot going on, don’t worry: it hardly matters. For Deadpool & Wolverine the story is just a very loose framework for a series of slightly smug in-jokes about nineties and noughties nostalgia, and gags about corporate mergers. (In case you missed it, Disney bought 20^th Century Fox and swallowed its comic book franchises like a money-Moloch). This matters an awful lot to some. Many others won’t care less. Deadpool & Wolverine very much tailors to the first group. If telling gags about Disney’s caution about jokes on drugs and anal sex, or riffing on the X-Men movies being less-and-less good over many years, sounds like your idea of comedy gold then this is for you.

Moloch and anal sex in the same paragraph – well-read show-off who wants to look cool ain’t ya?

Deadpool & Wolverine prunes a lot of comic mileage (or tries to) from mocking the “special sock” longings of geeks and fanboys, those who wile away hours debating who’s costume looked best or who could beat who in a fight. But this is a film mocking shallow, fanservice wank while itself being a massively shallow, fanservice piece of wank. If the only thing you felt was missing from Hugh Jackman’s previous Wolverine career was that he never wore the yellow-and-blue uniform, then this is the movie for you.

You were so pleased with that fanservice comment I saw you use it several times in Whatsapp hot takes. Twat.

Deadpool & Wolverine mocks fans for their shallow love for the obvious easy hit of seeing Deadpool and Wolverine fight, or a cameo from a well-known actor from an old movie or a celebrity playing a different version of a familiar character, then fills the film with almost literally nothing but this. Am I really meant to get excited seeing an actor revive a comic book role from a noughties superhero film we’ve forgotten and everyone at the time thought was rubbish? For all Deadpool & Wolverine wants to feel like something cheeky and dirty, it’s the safest slab of product out there. Every single thing in it feels like it has been cribbed from a fan’s wishlist on a Reddit thread. It feigns cocking a snook at Disney, but Deadpool is just an in-house jester: tweaking his master’s nose while taking a pay cheque and avoiding anything really pointed in his barbs. After a while you just get tired of it and the film’s embrace of cliché and retreads isn’t justified by Deadpool turning to the camera and pointing it out.

Getting up a head of righteous steam there ain’t you? Still paid to see it didn’t you! Sucker!

Still at least it’s better than when the film tries to have a heart. I’d respect it more if it was willing to make Deadpool a flat-out psychopath with no real sense of morals. Instead, he’s really all (very tiresome) talk, because Deadpool & Wolverine is desperate to turn him into someone the masses can find sympathetic by mixing his mook slaughter with emotive mooning over a group polaroid of the friends he’s trying to save from erasure from existence. Much like Ryan Reynolds’ performance, it often feels like filmmakers enjoying the shock quality of shrieking “FUCK” in a park, before running home to an early bedtime with their families.

Chickened out of writing the C-word there? Guess you don’t want to get blocked.

Deadpool & Wolverine opens with assurance it won’t ‘desecrate’ the legacy of Logan (an actual, good film with a proper story and emotional arc) – before, in one of the film’s better jokes, it has Deadpool dig up the skeleton of the dead Wolverine and use the bones to bloodily slaughter an army of TVA mooks. But then it desecrates it in a different, deliberate, even worse, way by ripping Logan off with shameless abandon. It gives Wolverine pretty much exactly the same plotline, including restaging almost identical emotional conversations, in almost identical locations. In fact, my overwhelming emotion watching Hugh Jackman snooze through this film with a growl was sadness that he came back after his perfect sign-off. But then I guess he get over a dozen million reasons to come back and prostitute himself here for one last runaround.

Like Deadpool doesn’t make that joke himself in the film – if you’re going to knock it, don’t rip it off!

Maybe he thought it was funny. It does feel like a home movie put together by a series of actors in their forties or fifties desperate to show their kids they can do something cool. Is there anything good in Deadpool & Wolverine? There are some good fights, even if Shawn Levy isn’t the best at staging them, but it does spray claret marvellously all over the place to well-chosen Madonna tunes. Matthew MacFadyen, essaying a cartoonish version of Succession’s Tom Wambsgans, is good fun, Emma Corrin makes an effective if under-used villain. There are some good jokes.

Because you gotta give some sugar right?

But the overwhelming air is smugness. None of the fourth-wall, franchise-teasing, corporate digs are that funny and very few of the asides carry any bite (several are about how handsome or muscular its stars are – the only remotely sharp comment is on Hugh Jackman’s divorce). Aside from that it offers nothing new or familiar, its setting is reminiscent of several other films, and it rips off plot galore from Logan and TV’s Loki show. Perhaps worst of all, in a year where an actually original and daring film Mad Max: Fury Road has fatally tanked at the box office, this openly rips off its location and style for The Void and it’s going to make millions.

It’s not as if you were even wild about Furiosa, but like the sanctimonious prick you are, you’ll give a pass to a film from an auteur but then knock a Marvel film. What makes you such a smug, humourless prick eh? Go with the fun!

Look for the last time, it’s not big, clever or funny to just milk some cheap gags out of anticipating the criticism. That’s enough. Fuck off now.

Touchy!

No seriously. Fuck off.

American Fiction (2023)

Intelligent, challenging satire mixes with moving family drama in this excellent debut

Director: Cord Jefferson

Cast: Jeffrey Wright (Dr Thelonius “Monk” Ellison), Tracee Ellis Ross (Dr Lisa Ellison), Issa Rae (Sintara Golden), Sterling K. Brown (Dr Clifford Ellison), John Ortiz (Arthur), Erika Alexander (Coraline), Leslie Uggams (Agnes Ellison), Adam Brody (Wiley), Keith David (Willy the Wonker), Okrieriete Onaodowan (Van Go Jenkins), Myra Lucretia Taylor (Lorraine), Raymond Anthony Thomas (Maynard)

Dr Theolonius “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is fed up. His new book is getting no traction with publishers, who want a “Black book” not the classics-inspired literary novels Monk writes. His family life is at a point of crisis: his mother (Leslie Uggams) has rapidly onset dementia, his doctor sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) is divorced and tired of being the only child looking after her, his plastic surgeon brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) is embracing his coming-out and divorce with drugs and a parade of younger boyfriends. In need of money to pay for his mother’s care, Monk pours his frustrations into writing exactly the sort of book publishers want: My Pafology, a crime-drugs-and-deadbeat filled stereotypical low-brow “Black” novel that he submits as a joke. Needless to say, the liberal white publishers come back with bank-busting advances, wowed by this “authentic Black voice” – much to Monk’s disbelief and self-loathing indignation.

This satire is the flashy clothing American Fiction dresses itself up in. In this impressively confident debut from writer-director Cord Jefferson, it frequently pulls out some whipper-sharp comic lines as it skewers the guilt-ridden pretentions of the liberal white elite, so concerned with being seen to care about embracing Black culture, that they don’t even notice they have effectively ghettoised Black culture into exactly the sort of crime-and-drugs nonsense Monk satirises in his fake novel. It’s a good joke, and the fact that Cord Jefferson’s film wears it a bit thin (the parade of self-congratulatory white people falling over themselves to praise the novel are fundamentally reprising the same joke each time – nothing new is added once you’ve got it the first time) doesn’t change that.

Interestingly, as I sat in an Oxford cinema-screening exclusively filled with white people laughing, I realised American Fiction is its own sort of meta-satire. How many people in the cinema I sat in realised they were proving the point of the film? American Fiction displays to white people a funny sketch about our own concerns to be seen to be saying and doing the right thing. We laugh at these idiots and reassure ourselves that we would never be so utterly unaware about our patronising gate-keeping, while also embodying many of the attitudes the film is skewering. We want to be seen to be right-on and laughing at the right things. It’s a neat way for Jefferson to both entertain and challenge us.

Jefferson’s film is partly about urging us to break beyond our shallow ideas of what “Black America” must be. Monk comes from an affluent middle-class family that, skin colour aside, wouldn’t like out of place in the Hamptons. His background is one of beach-house second-homes, art on the walls, lacrosse sticks in his bedroom and a family where everyone has a doctorate. He even has a devoted housekeeper, expertly played by Myra Lucretia Taylor, who’s both an honorary aunt and also a shrewd commentary on stereotypical Black servants, calling the children “Mr Monk” and “Mr Cliff”.

While Monk writes about the urban ghetto with satiric anger, it’s clear that world is almost totally alien to him. The film itself acknowledges it: in an intriguing exchange, Issa Rae’s author of a more stereotypical ‘Black’ novel (We’s All Lives in the Ghetto) even calls out Monk for us air of class-based judgement around other parts of the Black community, social commentary I would have liked the film to challenge more (The film encourages us to question Monk, a snob and arguably a slight bully, but frequently gives him a pass by contrasting him to the ridiculous and more selfish characters around him). It would have been interesting to see more of the reaction to the book from Black readers, not just white ones eager to show their credentials.

American Fiction though takes on the targets it goes for with a certain aplomb. Publishers, literary prize givers and the overtly-but-dutifully-PC are effectively skewered. It’s also one of the few books that really gives a sense of writing. Monk’s drafting of the novel sees the characters he is bringing life to appear in his study with him, parroting his dialogue and then turning to discuss character, motivation and make suggestions to the author. More of this, giving us more insight into the novel and the assumptions that underline Monk’s writing of it, would have given an interesting extra dimension to the film’s satire.

Jefferson’s clever and vibrant film suckers us in with satire, but really flourishes as a complex family drama. He offers an affecting and compassionate storyline of siblings who have grown apart due to their natural inclination to independence, distance and repressed emotion. (It’s suggested this is a trait inherited from their father, a famed surgeon with a rollcall of infidelities.) American Fiction beautifully sketches very natural portraits of siblings who know exactly how to push each other’s buttons, but also quickly fall back onto a shared language of memories and mutual experience. For all the satire, it’s as a heartfelt, small-scale family piece that the film really excels.

This is partly because it gives such wonderful opportunities to a fabulous array of actors. Jeffrey Wright, so often a supporting player quietly adding depth to a series of under-written franchise films, is excellent as Monk. Wright perfectly captures his hangdog resentments, his bitterness at not getting a fair deal and middle-age ennui. He also brings to life the pre-emptive walls Monk has built up to keep pain (and other people) out, the same intellectual distance that makes his books hard-sells. Combine that with Wright’s expert comic timing – not only his awkwardly uncomfortable shifts into his urban persona, but also his head-in-hands exasperation at the shallowness of the world – and this is a brilliant showcase for a consistently impressive actor.

Equally fine is Sterling K Brown as Monk’s frequently selfish brother Cliff, trying to enjoy life while he can – like Wright, Brown’s comic and emotional touch are spot-on. The film touches on themes of generational homophobia – their increasingly senile mother, sensitively played by Leslie Uggams, is clearly disapproving of his sexuality – but doesn’t hit this beat too hard. Tracee Ellis Ross is a breath of life-filled air as Monk’s sister while Erika Alexander gives emotional weight and depth to a slightly underwritten part as Monk’s new neighbour turned girlfriend Coraline.

American Fiction is frequently stronger when it focuses on crafting this low-key, realistic family drama, refreshingly clear of manufactured drama. What people will remember though is funny (if slightly one-note) satire – Monk even turns his story into exactly the sort of cross-racial appeal movie ready to collect awards, that you could argue American Fiction itself is. American Fiction ends with several alternative endings, each of which just made me feel Jefferson himself wasn’t sure how to end it. But, on the whole, this is a highly promising debut from Cord Jefferson, crammed with excellent dialogue and performances, which casts a fresh and urgent eye on important questions.

Deadpool (2016)

Ryan Reynold swings into action in slightly-pleased-with-itself comicbook satire Deadpool

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson/Deadpool), Morena Baccarin (Vanessa), Ed Skrein (Francis Freeman/Ajax), TJ Miller (Weasel), Gina Carano (Angel Dust), Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenager Warhead), Stefan Kapičić (Colossus), Leslie Uggams (Blind Al)

One day (soon?) we’ll reach critical mass with comic book films. Eventually, when every single character who’s ever appeared in a frame of a DC or Marvel comic has appeared on the screen, we’ll surely wonder if we will ever see anything new again. Some may already feel this, so perhaps that explains why Deadpool, which, for all its faults, is a comic book film doing something different, made such a big impact.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a mercenary who meets and falls in love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Discovering he has terminal cancer, he leaves her so she does not have to watch him die, and signs up to a gruesome medical procedure designed to bring out dormant mutant genes that may cure him. It works but leaves him hideously deformed. Wanting revenge, he names himself Deadpool and hunts for a cure to his deformity – scared Vanessa would reject him without it.

What Deadpool does well is wittily flag up the familiar tropes of comic book movies. The film in fact follows each trope to the letter – but at least it has a foul-mouthed cheeky commentary. The big question you have to ask is, can a film really be that smart and different if it basically does something very traditional? If I tell you I’m going to perform a tired magic trick you’ve seen before, but I’ll do it while pointing up every single cliché of delivery, with panache, does it matter the magic trick is still as tired as I said it was at the start?

That’s what Deadpool is – the same old ideas, re-packaged in a different way, so juvenile and cheeky that for a beat or two it feels like something new, which it manifestly isn’t. It might not take itself seriously, but it also doesn’t really develop into something unique. The film opens with a neat comic riff on credits, listing not the actors but their generic character traits (“Love Interest”, “Brit Baddie”, “Comic relief” etc. etc.) – sure this is funny and smart, but doesn’t change the fact that the characters themselves are exactly that.

Deadpool is a faux-clever film. It’s a cheeky piece of college humour: an X-Men film with swearing, sex, fourth wall breaking and gags about other films. There is a sort of witty enjoyment from Deadpool reminding us he knows he is in a movie. But most of the time, he basically behaves exactly like dozens of other lead characters in dozens of other films: he has an emotional arc of fear of rejection and embracing who he is that you’ve seen so many times before.

But the market is so saturated with films like this that the difference of presentation makes you feel for a moment you are seeing something new or clever – rather than essentially a very high budget, end-of-the-pier routine full of cheeky humour. Much of this is pretty funny by the way, but don’t kid yourself that it’s anything clever. And I don’t really think many of the gags here would stand up to repeated viewing – it’s basically just swearing and shocks. The writing is not great, its punchlines and shock beats giving the illusion of intelligent scripting.

Most of its success (in more ways than one) comes down to Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds campaigned for the film to be made for nearly a decade, and he totally nails the character. He thought up many of the best gags, and delivers the entire thing with whipper-snapper quickness and likeability. He gets the balance generally just right, and lands all the film’s big laughs. He’s very good.

But it’s an elevation of material that plays at being clever, while really just being an effective repackaging of the same-old, same-old. Remove the jokes and everything you would expect from a superhero origins story is present and correct.

So maybe everyone was a little tired of the same old, same old from Marvel et al and wanted something different. That’s the explanation I can think of for why a pretty average film ended up so damn popular. The action when we get it is pretty good, there is some imagination behind the cameras, but it’s basically a teenager’s idea of the best film, like, ever rather than an actually very good film. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it puts a nice shiny new tyre on it.