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Hilariously wrong ‘Deadpool’ a labor of twisted, juvenile love

He drops F-bombs and bodies in equal measure. His nonstop snark — “I’m about to do to you what Limp Bizkit did to music in the ’90s” — makes Iron Man sound as bland as Captain America. And he’s briefly shown pleasuring himself while holding a stuffed unicorn.

“Deadpool” may not be the superhero movie we deserve. But, after an onslaught of increasingly formulaic big-screen adventures with ever-escalating stakes, it just might be the superhero movie we need.

As long as “we” are at least 17 or accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. This one’s rated R, folks.

Former Special Forces operative Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) spends his days scaring bad guys for money when he isn’t hanging out at Sister Margaret’s Home for Wayward Girls, the dive bar for mercenaries owned by his buddy Weasel (T.J. Miller, “Silicon Valley”). That’s where he finds a kindred spirit in tattooed hooker Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin, “Homeland”). “Your crazy matches my crazy,” he coos.

And, for a while, they’re happy — as evidenced by the months-spanning sex montage.

Then Wade is diagnosed with late-stage cancer and turns to a shadowy organization that claims it can cure him. After plenty of trauma dished out by Ajax (Ed Skrein,”The Transporter Refueled”) and his henchwoman, Angel Dust (Trinity Christian grad Gina Carano), designed to trigger his latent mutant cells, Wade unlocks the power of accelerated healing.

He’s also left horribly scarred from head to toe — so much so that he goes underground so Vanessa won’t have to see him like that — and seeks revenge on those responsible as the masked Deadpool. But when he goes after Ajax and misses, his actions leave Vanessa vulnerable.

For once, the entire planet isn’t on the brink of destruction. One of the world’s great cities isn’t imperiled. At its heart, “Deadpool” is just a fairly simple story of a guy trying to save his girl.

Nicknamed The Merc with the Mouth, Deadpool is a difficult character to get right tonally. He isn’t just a juvenile, pop-culture-fueled insult machine. He knows he’s in a comic book and, in this case, a movie. For proof of the hazards involved, you need look no further than the first time Reynolds portrayed the character, during Deadpool’s godawful introduction in 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” when his mouth was inexplicably fused shut.

But the “Deadpool” team of “Zombieland” writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and first-time director Tim Miller, with a huge assist from Reynolds, have crafted a labor of love that feels like a movie for fanboys by fanboys.

For starters, they waste no time by getting in the first of several jabs at that disastrous “Wolverine” appearance, as well as Reynolds’ involvement in 2011’s misbegotten “Green Lantern,” before the opening credits are over.

Fittingly, few subjects escape Deadpool’s insults, including The X-Men — or at least Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who he notes are the only members of the franchise the movie could afford.

When the goofily square Colossus attempts to drag the antihero back to Professor Xavier for training, Deadpool can’t help but wonder which version he’s talking about, asking “McAvoy or Stewart?”

The manic “Deadpool” drags a bit during the “how I got my powers” portion of his origin story. You have to hope that someday studios will trust that audiences can just accept a superhero — or whatever you’d call Deadpool — for who he is without going into the why. Then again, after the raging dumpster fire “Wolverine” made of his beginnings, this one probably was necessary.

And as Ajax, Skrein is a bit of a wet blanket.

But the hilariously wrong “Deadpool” gets so much else right, those quibbles are easy to overlook.

The attitude. The gore. The pedophilia jokes — but, you know, clever pedophilia jokes. “Deadpool” is everything fans of the subversive comic book could have hoped for without alienating newcomers.

It’s also the perfect marriage of character and star, as Reynolds bursts out of the movie jail he’s been in since being tainted by the stank of “Green Lantern.”

“Deadpool” boasts some inventive, and surprisingly brutal, action scenes. But it would be nearly as entertaining just watching Reynolds and stand-up Miller riff with each other for the duration.

That’s because, unlike in “Wolverine,” the gun- and katana-wielding Deadpool has full command of the greatest weapon at his disposal: his mouth.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch

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