"The Order" is nothing groundbreaking, but still a good deal of fun all the same

...Could you stop staring?  Please?

Show: The Order

Genre: Supernatural Drama

Network: Netflix Original

Premiered: March 7, 2019

From Buffy the Vampire Slayer down through The Vampire Diaries and the host of its descendants, few television genres can claim the same degree of bloated over-extension as the tangled web of productions known collectively as "the paranormal drama." Whether we’re talking vampires or werewolves, ghosts or witches, or all of the above, you can’t throw a stone anywhere in TV Land without hitting someone baring fangs or weaving a magical incantation while tenaciously necking with a gorgeous co-star in between P.E. and Chemistry 101. Netflix, of course, had long ago planted its bi-colored flag atop this mound of fecund dollar returns, with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Stranger Things but the more circulated shows in this genre falling under its established corporate stamp. And into this nexus of internet savvy, media business, and supernatural fantasy they toss yet another original series: The Order, created by Dennis Heaton, which premiered on March 7th and aims for a slice of the lucrative paranormal pie with an attractive cast and a little twist on the supernatural drama which adds some pop to its wardrobe. Okay, so I’m a little late to the party — as in, nearly a month late — and I'm sure everyone who’d been hellbent on watching it had probably binged it the very weekend it came out. But to the one or two of you out there who missed the memo, or have been buried under Netflix recommends for the past several fortnights, if you’ve missed this little morsel in your lists, it may be worth taking up now and giving the old college look-see.

Synopsis

We're introduced to Jack Morton (Jake Manley), a baby-faced freshman who's “fresh” in every sense, standing over his mother’s grave while he reads aloud a letter fulfilling his apparent lifelong ambition of getting into the illustrious Belgrave University, a school with old money rules and more than a few dark secrets. But for Jack and his maternal grandfather (Matt Frewer), his acceptance isn’t a cue to start a four-year binge of parties and student life. They are men on one peculiar mission: enter Belgrave, infiltrate a secret and powerful fraternal society centered in the campus known as "the Order," and find a way to strike at its mysterious leader Edward Coventry (Max Martini), who also happens to be Jack’s biological father and the supposed nefarious scoundrel behind his mother's demise. But there’s more afoot than mere skulduggery from an oligarchic secret society; the Order hides a darkly magical secret, and as Jack falls deeper into a web of supernatural intrigue, he gets locked in a paranormal conflict way outside what he signed up for.

The Good

The best thing The Order has going for it is a delightful and irreverent sense of humor. Unlike the flood of supernatural series spilling over Netflix and other stations’ time slots, The Order approaches the supernatural with a casual air and a delightful sense of whimsy that somehow avoids reducing or trivializing its inherent danger. Jack doesn’t stumble into the paranormal ring as a hopelessly naive newcomer; though the world of magic and werewolves slips a teensy bit outside his grandfather’s preparations, Jack takes it, if not quite in stride, than with a great deal more grace and wit than the average schmoe. I know “likeable” is about as bland and nondescript a compliment as you can make of a character these days, but the glove definitely fits, and watching him bumble his way through college is more joy than irritation thanks in no small part to Manley's effortless charisma. Jack's misadventures merely set the beat to this deliciously off-key drummer, where the supernatural gets introduced and incorporated with all the flare and gravitas of a dorm inspection, and several tense moments defuse on a cheeky quip or turn of the phrase. Rather than grounds for pulling my hair out, these moments of lightness add flavor to the broth, like the comically PC tour of the modern college campus where freshmen receive both a rape whistle, and a “how not to rape” pamphlet. The show knows not to take itself too seriously, and yet avoids falling into the trap of (overt) self-aware pastiche like the million or so similar series gunking up the airwaves and interwebs. In that happy medium, The Order finds a contrasting voice to the myriad of dark, paranormal, Grimmified fairy tales littering the market.

The Bad

Unfortunately, this lighter shade does come with a few bad palettes. For one, there’s the all-encompassing cheese factor to consider whenever anything like this series pops up. The dialogue, while whimsical and pleasant most of the time, can veer into the obnoxious on occasion. This mainly comes to the fore with Jack’s awkward and janky “romantic” slog with Alyssa Drake, a fellow Belgrave student, campus tour guide, and his eventual superior once he joins the Order, who's played by the generally charming Sasha Grey. Their dynamic feels forced and stiff, like two neophyte thespians reading their lines and the implied emotion thereof on each others’ foreheads. I know they’re supposed to be in college, and trust me, I remember just how little the maturity level of an inbound freshman can differ from the high school knuckleheads they evolve from. But their chemistry sizzles with all the pop of a damp towel, and as entertaining as they are separately, they looked the polar opposite of dazzling at every turn of their screen time together. Thankfully, this little gaffe remains the only stink I’m willing to point out. Adjusting your expectations for this series (it is a paranormal teen drama/thriller, after all) means letting go a bit of the critical scalpel and suspending any comparisons to genre titans and path breakers, like the aforementioned Buffy or The Vampire Diaries.

The Ugly

Good lord, you may as well call this show Your Mileage May Vary: the Series. Though The Order is low-key and innocuous enough to escape the type of hard-nosed scrutiny that leads fans along divisive extremes, so much of its content can be a hit or miss for practically everyone. Is Jack a funny, enjoyable main lead, or an irritating, bland, cookie-cutter protagonist; does the mystery of the plot invite intrigue and speculation, or is it a snooze fest out of place with the rest of the story?  The fact that it doesn’t take itself as seriously as other shows of its kind, while a supreme strength in my eyes, may invite legitimate accusations of derailment due to breaking the atmosphere and heaping piles of cheese atop it. Seriously, there’s something for everyone to love or hate in equal measure, with only your mood to decide which way the windsock blows at any given moment.

To Bing or Not to Binge

Knock yourself out and Binge to your heart’s content.  Yes, the show’s derivative, and yes, it's a hot ticket to Cheesyville at its very worst, but that’s as close to a nadir as you’ll likely get. There’s no ground to break here or new paradigms a-shifting; just good, old fashioned comedy-drama, with a refreshingly irreverent eye on the paranormal. Speaking as someone a little miffed by the borderline apocalyptic tone so many of these series flash like a Boy Scout badge, I find it The Order's fresh humor and fresher protagonists must welcomed divergence.

Movie Review: Deadpool

 

"Heh...load!"

Movie: Deadpool

Directed by: Tim Miller

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Ed Skrein, Morena Baccarin

Verdict: Crude, shameless, and often hilarious, Deadpool flips the overplayed superhero movie milieu upside-down with its dark humor, subversive wit, and surprisingly solid joining of bathos and pathos, topped with a strong showing by a likable lead that somehow manages to carry to plot over the weighty trappings of its own convoluted origin story.

In depth: Alright - let’s be honest: who’s sick of superhero movies?  Sure, it was great when Toby Maguire was shooting web all over the place, or when Christopher Nolan stepped out of his comfort zone to create compelling drama out of a man in a flying rat costume.  But it seems like every three months, one universe or another is spitting out a new baby to add to a growing family of increasingly superfluous flicks and sequels.  All this swill creates is perfect fermentation for a character like Deadpool to dip his grubby little feet into.  Deadpool is arguably this generation’s iconic Marvel personality - sure, he shares the spot with the still stubbornly popular Wolverine, but as a whole he’s come to represent the general mood of many superhero comic fans: he laughs at conventional morality, breaks the fourth wall with all the delicacy of a cavity search, and basically fails to be or do anything remotely heroic.  So with my expectations running high, I walked into Marvel's latest showcase featuring him in hopes of finding reprieve from all the larger-than-life, apocalyptic and/or origin stories that have saturated the movie scene for some time.  And I got exactly what I wanted, for despite a few slips here and there, Deadpool was a fast, furious ride through Marvel’s wild side, delivering a much-needed antidote to spandex overdose.

Reynolds stars as the legendary Merc with a Mouth, carving a bloody (and side-splitting) path of vengeance as he tracks down the mutant mad scientist Ajax - played by British actor Ed Skrein - who's responsible for ruining his life.  Along the way, he kills a few people, has a run-in with the X-Men (alright, two, including the unfortunately named Negasonic Teenage Warhead) and even gets a chance at love with kind-hearted prostitute Vanessa (Baccarin).  Stocked full of mythology gags, fourth wall malfunctions, and crude humor and below-the-belt shots at everything from cancer to blindness, Marvel’s bad boy revels in the film’s R-rating, all while somehow managing to piece together a mostly coherent plot line - certainly Marvel’s best effort in over a year.  

Ironically, (or maybe not) Deadpool accomplishes what Origins failed so terribly to do: provide an interesting origin story that matches the source material as closely as possible while still allowing necessary breaks from conformity.  From the delightful in medias res opening and laugh-out-loud gag credits, to Deadpool taking time out of his busy car-flipping schedule to delve into flashback, the movie doesn’t pull the punches right out of the gate and somehow makes exposition actually fun.  The detailed cinematography really stands out, with the action scenes almost literally hitting you in the face, and Deadpool's animated mask making you feel like you've actually stepped into one of his comics.  This shouldn't be surprising; this is a (sorta) superhero movie, after all, and actions scenes normally bear almost no commentary in this genre because of it.  But in this case, it wasn’t just the action, but how it was used to enhance the ridiculousness of the situation to spectacular effect, that are really noteworthy; the bullet time sequences, for example, were elevated to the point of parody, but bucked the usual trend by melding with and enhancing the action, instead of just taking away from it.

Ryan Reynolds hops into the title role surrounded by a small bit of controversy due to both his lackluster film corpus lately, and his connection to the horribly conceived big-screen debut of the beloved iconoclast in Wolverine: Origins.  I can’t say that I shared the same worries; his one-scene wonder was just about the best thing in that train wreck, and while his record has admittedly been spotty as of late, his aptitude for black comedy and wit is solid.  He proved me right, for while his comparatively nasally voice after Nolan North’s inspired renditions took some getting used to, in no time you couldn't help but to revel in Ryan’s profanity-laden tirades.  The actor’s natural motor-mouth tendencies served him well, and it seems like, after a little of fumbling, he’s found the role he was born to play.

That said, I can’t say that the other actors help him in carrying the movie in any way.  True, Morena Baccarin was delightful, even if she did fall into the damsel in distress trope way too easily, but Skrein’s odd cross between bored sociopath and soccer hooligan didn’t quite do it for me, nor did his butchy henchwoman Angel Dust.  Granted, this may have been part of an elaborate joke on the shallow and almost laughably stupid characterizations of many super villains in this genre, but it’s hard to tell.  I kept hoping that Deadpool would pop up and skewer or at least explain the inane choices and motives driving some characters - the most glaring to me being why Frances - sorry, Ajax - thought it was a good idea to taunt, and then lure, a virtually indestructible psychopathic killing machine to his location, with no real plan on how to, you know, kill him.  Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (and yes, Wade gave that name the poking it so richly deserved) came off a little better, played by Stefan Kapičić and Brianna Hildebrand, respectively; it helped that they were essentially there to play off of our main hero in different and very funny ways - one being the straight-laced dogooder, the other, simply a bored teenager who marvels at the stupidity in every single adult around her.

Besides that little gap, though, I found the story strong - surprisingly so, since of all the adjectives I’d use to describe a Deadpool movie, “touching” wouldn’t usually be in my top ten.  And yet, it managed to choke a few genuine drops of emotion out of the proverbial offensive turnip, particularly in Wade’s romance with Vanessa.  Their relationship wasn’t overplayed for the most part, and only delved into sentimentality once or twice, which already outstrips most romantic comedies by a mile.  It also gave Reynolds a modicum of room to maneuver, allowing him to show off his genuine nerdy charm - something most incarnations of Deadpool never get the chance to flex in anyway that isn't borderline creepy.  Unfortunately, this undeniable movie strength hides one of its biggest weaknesses.  While Deadpool doesn’t fudge up in indecisiveness like so many other movies that play both sides of the tragedy/comedy divide, it does make the mood whiplash hard and painful - particularly in those rare points when the bridging joke leading from one end to the other falls flat.

Worst of all, the tender moments, while well-done all by themselves, take away a bit of the... meanness, you’d expect in a Deadpool film.  Don’t get me wrong - it was plenty mean on most occasions, sometimes outstandingly so, especially as it concerned  legitimate pot shots at Marvel’s own ridiculousness.  But the movie was just a few snarky comments and subverted expectations shy of really twisting the knife home, and I was personally disappointed that it seemed to pull some of its punches.  But maybe I’m being a selfish; this odd balance was probably necessary in order to keep Deadpool from sliding into complete parody, which wouldn't have done the story any favors.  In the end, Miller found a good middle ground, between self-effacing parody and genuine storytelling, and following his example wouldn’t be a bad thing for any future superhero movie makers.

At the final stand, Deadpool was a fun, witty, and irreverent joy ride through the sometimes twisted, sometimes heartbreaking story of one of Marvel’s most iconic heroes of recent times.  Reynolds nails his role like the bulls-eyes he lands on his unfortunate on screen adversaries, and minor nitpicks aside, Deadpool is arguably the most fun, witty, and tongue-in-cheek superflick since Guardians of the Galaxy.  In a movie market overflowing with heroes and their sequels, here’s one franchise I wouldn’t mind seeing more of in the near future.

Grade: A