Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Although suffused with welcome touches of sly humor, the proceedings never gather the necessary dramatic momentum.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Ryan Reynolds gets the full-throttle wisecracking showcase he deserves in this scabrously funny origin story.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Imagine Spider-Man with legitimately funny quips, waaay less angst, and a bug-eyed getup that's lethally accessorized.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Smart, sexy and outrageous, "Deadpool" delivers.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
You're initially jazzed by his effrontery, but Deadpool, with his relentlessly glib, nothing-sacred attitude, is not an individual who wears particularly well.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's not subversive - it's meant to elasticize and enhance the superhero genre, to flatter the audience for being hip enough to get all of those in-jokes. And I was flattered.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
If only Deadpool were as clever, dark and funny as it believes itself to be.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Reynolds has never meshed as well with a character or found a better outlet for his smirking, smart aleck persona.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Deadpool . has the singular virtue of being funnier than we've been led to believe a superhero film can be.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Deadpool benefits from an intimate story with more heart than you would expect, but also a go-for-broke zeal, edging at times into Naked Gun-style parody.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
It's a film that's amused with itself, but thanks to a screwball screenplay by Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick and a charmingly snarky lead turn by Ryan Reynolds, that amusement is both thoroughly earned and completely contagious.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It seems less irreverent than self-congratulatory.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Rarely boring, but not half as smart, funny or subversive as it clearly believes itself to be.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
In the end, it's hard to shake the feeling that they've made a movie for boys that only adults are allowed to see. For the future sleepover party where some open-minded parent allows a screening, it'll surely be a blast.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Deadpool is everything that Hollywood has raised audiences to believe heroes are not: crass, selfish and with a vocabulary that would have made George Carlin blush.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Is it a hoot? Largely, yeah, if you like smug, dumb in-your-face humor.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Watching the film is like sitting at dinner with a teen-ager who believes that, if he swears long and loudly enough, he will shock the grownups into accepting him as one of their own.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Just as Deadpool himself wears a mask to hide his hideous features, Deadpool conceals a highly conventional origin story under a lot of winking self-awareness.

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Calling Deadpool "just another comic book movie" would do injustice to a film that makes a strong effort to deliver something different.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Deadpool succeeds where other irreverent send-ups of the genre failed. [But] the over-the-top mayhem, do-you-kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth trash talk, and jokey cynicism can't stop [it] from hurtling toward predictability.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
There aren't many superhero movies that exploit the liberating effects of the hard-R rating. But to me, the mock opening credits are the only detail that is fresh - sophomoric, but fresh.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
this movie's junky feel is part of its charm. Sure it goes on too long and repetition dulls its initial cleverness. Still, Deadpool is party time for action junkies and Reynolds may just have found the role that makes his career.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
Deadpool, intended as a spiky antidote to superhero oversaturation, ends up impaling only itself.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Deadpool avoids enough pitfalls to both embrace and flambe the superhero genre while also finding time for romance, doling out equal handfuls of bullets, barbs and warm fuzzies.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Maximally cheeky. Perversely potty-mouthed. Riotously funny. Insanely violent. Uneven as all get out. And fun, fun, fun.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It's fun, but it's not for everyone, and definitely not for families.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
While "Deadpool" heralds the arrival of a talented new director, its success belongs to Reynolds, who also served as a producer.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is a different kind of movie. The only rule it adheres to is that tropes are made to be eviscerated, turned on their heads, and trampled over.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
This is bad, borderline garbage, but disturbing, too, in that it's just the kind of fake-clever awfulness that might be cinema's future.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's a voraciously self-aware comedy, one that dines out on the inherent inanity of its own premise as much as it does the movies it's competing with.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Fans of X-Men will gobble it up, especially lewd teenage boys; newcomers to the Marvel Universe may miss some of the best zingers.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Flamboyantly vulgar and determinedly self-referential, Deadpool has the shape of a superhero movie but the soul of a Danny McBride flick.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It takes a strong stomach for extreme violence and over-the-top obscenity, but if you're willing to roll with that, "Deadpool" is a hoot.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
The politically incorrect material suits Ryan Reynolds as snugly as Marvel's tight red costume, giving the Canadian actor a chance to work out his mutant power for hurling snarky one-liners.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Reynolds' mighty mutant title character is anything but a conventional superdude, even before he acquires his extreme skills, red-hooded cosplay costume and scarred face and mind.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
Deadpool is obnoxious and puerile and infantile and has an irritating meta tone so snide that it's constantly in danger of nullifying the entire movie - and I still got a pretty big kick out of it.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The filmmakers do a lot of winking and rib poking; they sell "Deadpool" so hard that you might wonder if Marvel has started to pay on commission.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Reynolds is entertaining; it's rather sweet to see this eternally not-quite-a-star get closer than usual to justifying star billing.