Comic book nerds can rejoice — a good Deadpool movie has arrived.

“Deadpool,” directed by Tim Miller and starring Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin, is surprisingly mature and successfully adapts a beloved character.

Wade Wilson, played by Reynolds, is a former special operative making a living as a small-time mercenary.  While at the bar of a friend, played by T.J Miller, he meets Vanessa, played by Baccarin. Wilson and Vanessa fall in love, but their relationship is thrown through a loop by the emergence of cancer in Wilson’s body.  

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Doctors tell him it is incurable, so the mercenary leaves Vanessa and tries an experimental treatment. This procedure works, giving Wilson accelerated healing powers, but also leaves him scared from head to toe.

Now going by the name Deadpool, Wilson is after the people who did this to him and kidnapped Vanessa. 

Regardless of how you end up feeling about this movie, it is impressive that it was made at all. It took years of being stuck in development hell, and a lot of campaigning from star Reynolds, among others, to get this show on the road.

Even though it’s not the greatest comic book movie ever made, “Deadpool” is a high contender for best comic-to-screen adaptation. 

Few films beat this movie when it comes taking a character from the page and portraying him in his world with care and deliberation. Aspects like Deadpool breaking the fourth-wall comes off as genuine, while other films do poorly. 

A lot of this success comes from a combination of directing, writing and acting. Without perfectly portraying this high-octane world, without screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick writing dialogue fit for Deadpool and without Reynolds giving a 110 percent, this movie fails like a“Green Lantern” or “Fantastic Four.”

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Reynolds gives the performance he was born to give.

Saying this is the actor’s career highlight may seem like hyperbole to some, and giving the star all the credit is done too often in Hollywood, but it makes sense here. Through and through, this movie is Reynolds. 

Reynolds’ brand of improvised wit, pop culture references and sarcasm was an amazing fit for Deadpool even when he was cast in the awful “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”

Now, with more screen time, his full acting chops come out. He plays a character who is masked throughout a lot of the movie, yet through voice inflections and using unmasked scenes wisely, the actor makes the live-action Deadpool feel developed and dynamic.

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“Deadpool,” feels intimate, but undermines this idea constantly with shoddy X-Men references and self-referential humor, making it feel way too large and like every other overarching superhero movie reaching for the bigger picture.

While the character’s signature humor comes out perfectly, at times it slows the movie down and hurts the compact and persona storytelling this movie has.

The addition of Colossus, played by Stefan Kapicic, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Brianna Hildebrand, while cool and interesting, ends up falling a bit flat. The biggest reason it does not hit maximum potential is the movie is more apt to make a joke than let an idea make sense.

When trying to explain the fact that these are the only two X-Men in the film, the movie makes the joke of these two being the only ones the production could afford. While funny, this kind of self-referential humor can backfire and remind you of the movie’s problems.

This, and an ending with the same old giant building and ship crashing down to earth finale, leaves a bit of sour taste in your mouth.

But overall, “Deadpool” is like a good plate of nachos — nothing pretty, but a good tasting meal.     

Stars: 4 out of 5.   

Jacob Pierce can be reached at [email protected] or 618-536-3325