ONCE UPON A DEADPOOL

★★★

For anyone nostalgic for those distant days of free-to-air movie-butchering, in which ‘fucks’ were turned into ‘frigs’, lines were re-dubbed with comic disinterest in matching the movement of mouths, and action scenes often jumped abruptly, Once Upon A Deadpool is here to get you in the cut-up spirit.

‘Tis the season for a PG-13 re-version of Deadpool 2, albeit one that I can’t imagine anyone watching — no matter how 13-years-old they may be — without having seen the seven-months-ago original.

Of course, given the Deadpool series is already a meta-commentary on comic-book movies, it’s no surprise that this whole magilla is turned into another layer of meta-commentary, both on comic-book movies and on re-cut family-friendly-ish versions.

The new framing narrative, and pleasingly-ridiculous gimmick, is that Fred Savage has been abducted by the titular anti-hero, tied up in an elaborate recreation of — and reference to — his old boyhood bedroom in 1987’s The Princess Bride. He’s being read a bedtime story by Deadpool, from a leather-bound tome amusingly-titled Deadpool 2: King James Edition. It’s a version of that ultraviolent, foul-mouthed film you just saw, only now less ultraviolent and foul-mouthed. There’s still plenty of rapidfire jokes and comic digressions, but some of the more provocative lines hit the cutting room floor, or get cleaned up (here’s to Julian Dennison’s “pinchable cheeks”).

This re-cut is a shameless attempt to ring some more money out of one of the most profitable franchises of recent seasons; theoretically from having teenagers with strict parents now being allowed to show up, but really from having Deadpool’s army of fans filing in to effectively see the same film again. Especially in Australia, where the difference between the original’s MA rating and this revised M makes almost no change in the audience who’s going to be watching it (there’s two versions of Bumblebee around in Australia, one PG and one M, which seems a more substantial difference, but let’s not get too deep into the workings of the Classification Board).

The question, then, begs, is Once Upon A Deadpool ‘worth’ seeing for those who’ve already loved and laughed their way through Deadpool 2? Well, probably, as long as expectations are kept low, timekilling is the order of the day, and you don’t need this version of the film to be particularly coherent, or to move with a real sense of rhythm.

It works as re-watch because Once Upon A Deadpool is, in its own way, a rewatching; with the framing-narrative feeling like an added layer of commentary, a grand trailer-reaction, or some such. Savage — as he did in The Princess Bride — interrupts the film to ask questions, or offer criticisms. He points out how Deadpool 2 “fridged” its love-interest, how its meta-jokes about lazy writing are their own form of lazy writing, how little of the “deeply-layered and richly-nuanced backstory” of antagonist Cable makes the screen, and brings up that favourite notion of fan discourse/criticism, “believability”.

There’s plenty of other things Kevin Arnold could’ve questioned — like, if Juggernaut is supposedly Sir Patrick Stewart’s brother in this extended X-verse, why does he talk like King Zøg from Disenchantment? — but having these raised makes the film play as part of a broader cultural conversation; this re-watching, discussion, and joke-making feeling a lot like internet discourse.

The real lament is that Once Upon A Deadpool doesn’t go further. Maybe this is due to logistics or disinterest — these extra Savage-starring scenes were shot in three days, if the film’s lacerating self-mockery is to be believed — but I found myself wishing that the added framing-narrative would make this meta-movie even more meta. Deadpool already offers its own running commentary on comic-book tropes, screenwriting clichés, and the mercenary nature of the movie-biz; adding another self-aware layer on top of its self-awareness should, ideally, have the film turning into something so tangled-up in meta-textual hijinks it gets genuinely surreal. Instead, it plays as mild comic riff on what’s already a comic riff; its recutting, and re-examination, something familiar from internet #content or DVD menu-screen, but rarely seen in multiplexes on wide-release.