In Praise of the Ryan Reynolds Prototype
‘Adventureland,’ ‘Van Wilder,’ and the ‘Deadpool’ shtick that’s finally stuck
You know as soon as he walks onscreen that he’s probably cooler than you. But that’s okay. It’s precisely the point.
Ryan Reynolds first strolls into Adventureland — both the 2009 movie co-starring Jesse Eisenberg and a fresh-from-Twilight Kristen Stewart as well as the Pennsylvania amusement park in which it’s set — clad in a leather jacket with a guitar slung over his shoulder and a case of subtle side-eye, and you are sure: he’s definitely cooler than you. Reynolds’ theme park mechanic Mike Connell has jammed with Lou Reed. He’s always ever-so-slightly bored, and compensating for personal dissatisfaction with sarcastic asides and a seemingly endless supply of caustic bon mots. Oh, and he’s the one KStew is actually sleeping with, despite the nascent affection of Eisenberg’s charmingly hapless college grad with the summer-trip-ruining financial luck. Because the ladies have always loved Canadian imports named Ryan, and Reynolds is, happily, no exception.
Reynolds hit the A-list with a bang in 2016 thanks to the little comic book movie that could, Deadpool—a self-aware, fourth-wall breaking superhero flick that managed to take a parade of intelligently dirty jokes and turn them into the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. Reynolds’ turn as the foul-mouthed, self-healing mutant earned him a Golden Globe nomination, while the film itself became the first live-action comic book movie to score a best-picture nomination in the Hollywood Foreign Press’ 74-year history. (Though Reynolds did lose the award to that other, previously alluded-to Canadian Ryan, he also won hearts — and many a headline — by kissing tablemate Andrew Garfield on the mouth to commemorate the loss. How very delightfully Deadpool of him.)
Now, the funnyman has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a tabloid dream of a wife and two beautiful blonde baby girls that have turned him into an endearing, well-chronicled quote machine. But his current covetable status, like the Deadpool movie that solidified it, was a long time coming; the actor first began kicking around the idea of adapting the sarcastic, survivalist superhero for the big screen with executives at Fox more than a decade ago. “It would vanish off the radar, then it would come back. It was a real sort of emotional yo-yo,” he told the LA Times before its record-breaking opening weekend. “I’ve always likened it to the worst relationship I’ve ever been in: on-again, off-again, occasionally sleeping together, which just causes more pain. And then finally it ended in a really lovely wedding.”
But before the wedding, of course, came the [cinematic] courtship, beginning with a handful of low-budget soap operas. (Yes, you want to see an adolescent Reynolds explain to you that “some guys have it, some guys don’t.” That confidence will take you far, kid.)
Up next, a short-lived attempt at college: “I’m not being facetious. I spent 45 minutes in college, and I turned around and said, ‘I’m going to drive to L.A. and try to get into the Groundlings,’” he told Variety. Then came the first, largely under the radar iteration of his now beloved smartass persona, on the set of the relatively short-lived ABC sitcom, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, where he reportedly liked to warm up the audience with a short set of stand up. But, despite the leading television role, he didn’t yet see himself as a leading man. “I was thinking of myself as the wacky next-door neighbor,” he explained to the magazine.
Enter Van Wilder. Reynolds first gave his now trademark sarcasm a go as an Animal House-inspired underachieving college student back in 2002. The bro-comedy was not exactly critically praised at the time: The New York Times described it as little more “than a meandering succession of random gags”; years later, while promoting Green Lantern, Reynolds himself would sum it up in a tongue-in-cheek third-person biographical interview with Entertainment Weekly as “the one-woman show National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, which, surprisingly, garnered Reynolds absolutely no significant award nominations.” But years later, the party movie would become a bit of a cult hit — thanks in part to its regular rotation on Comedy Central — and would eventually even spawn a sequel that the actor wisely passed on. (“I don’t want to ruin it,” he told MTV back in 2005 of the gross-out comedy’s newfound fan base.)
While Reynolds has since brought his slightly-off-the-leash sense of humor to restaurant comedy, romantic comedy, and yes, that other superhero movie (that probably would have put him off the genre altogether if it hadn’t also introduced him to his wife), he still lists the National Lampoon's role among his favorites. “I like Van Wilder. If you watch that, I’m just wholesale robbing from Chevy Chase,” he told GQ last fall when asked to list his “favorite Ryan Reynolds movies.” “There’s an empathetic arrogance that he has. Despite the fact that he’s telling you ‘Do not like me’ and he’s writing lines for himself that are meant to impale your sense of good taste, you’re attracted to him.”
Because that’s the crux of the charm. He’s not telling you to like him; he’s specifically leaving that decision up to you, and that mixture of witty engagement and nonchalant disinterest is nothing if not charismatic: in Deadpool, in Reynolds’ public persona itself, and in that other aforementioned indie, Adventureland, which the actor also listed among his favorite performances.
In Adventureland, director Greg Mottola’s follow-up to Superbad, Reynolds character is, on paper, well, superbad. A supposedly aspiring musician scraping by in a part-time job, he has cheated on his wife with numerous different girls, including Stewart’s enigmatic Em. He is, simply put, quite clearly an asshole. But we like him regardless, and like our protagonist, Eisenberg’s slowly disillusioned, ever-so-slightly nerdy college grad, James, we see him through most of the film as nothing less than a paragon of cool.
A paragon of cool whose superhero alter-ego can curse at the camera and still leave you rooting for him. A paragon of cool that, in real life, will respond to a supposed Oscar snub with a tickle fight. Because your career may go up and down, but funny one-liners, when properly delivered, can last forever.
Stream Adventureland now with a free trial of Tribeca Shortlist.
