Once Upon A Deadpool ★★★★☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis

Remember Deadpool 2? Think that but less swearing, slightly less blood, and more Fred Savage.

Review

So you want to see a family friendly version of Deadpool 2? Well you're out of luck because after all their editing it didn't make it past the 12A certificate criteria and had to be released as a 15 again. It still deserved that 15, it wasn't exactly hiding it's sweary side very well, and the violence is still there, you just don't get splattered with as much blood.

The editing unfortunately leaves you with some obvious continuity errors. The one that bugged me the most was the scene where DP is shot through the hand. They've left out the CGI for the gaping hole but it appears later in the film.

But lets look at the extra content you get.

Fred Savage and DP cut into the film in a homage to The Princess Bride. It's an amusing addition and I really did enjoy the Matt Damon skit.

They also edited the Stan Lee mural to say RIP, it definitely made it stick out more as I completely missed it the first time I saw DP2 at the cinema.

We also got an extra three credit scenes. One before the existing ones and two after. I nearly left... I was convinced that the fourth one was the end and I stood up to leave just as the fifth one started, and someone shouted at me to sit down. I'm not even mad, I was shouting internally at myself too. I was so glad to have seen it. The end Stan Lee montage brought a tear to my eye and was horribly poignant footage.

Is it in any way an improvement on the original? Absolutely not. Was it worth watching at the cinema? Definitely, yes. The screen was packed with people who knew what they were getting and were just there to have fun. (Apart from the two people who left after about ten minutes... spoil-sports.) We laughed together like it was the first time we'd seen the film and it was a great experience. With tickets in our cinema currently £5 of free with your Unlimited card it was well worth seeing on the big screen for the experience.

I'm left actively annoyed now though because it'll probably be another DVD I have to buy. Really there is no way to make Deadpool family friendly without taking everything away that makes him so fun. The ideal scenario would have been to have the Fred Savage bits edited together with the relevant snippets of the film and had it as a 20 minutes extra when they released it to buy. That or create a MST3K style commentary track for the film where you just see DP silently miming actions to Savage while he's telling him the story and we're watching the film, then having DP physically pause the film when Savage asks him questions so that they can do the scenes. Okay, I'm calm again now.

What you should do

I don't know if they're going to release it to buy or stream, and it was a one hit wonder at the cinema so I'm not really sure what you'll be able to do about seeing it. Ultimately though it's probably just worth watching the original again in all it's sweary and bloody glory.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

From this adaptation I think I'd like to have the bleeping buzzer that Deadpool uses in the added scenes. That would really come in handy on a day to day basis.