Deadpool 2 (2018)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz

Directed by: David Leitch

Synopsis: Deadpool is back and must go through spiritual changes to get back the love of his life as well as find new meaning to his vigilante lifestyle. Kinda.

What work(s): I can easily sum up my feeling for the film with this: It’s a crying shame that the best comedies being made today are comic book movies and not actual straight up comedies. Seriously, Deadpool 2 was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen since, well, maybe the first Deadpool—I’m not even going to think that hard for my analogy folks, sorry. But I laughed my tookus off. I wasn’t even remotely caring about the story or special effects or the fight choreography before I saw this movie, I was just interested in the clever jokes and pop culture references and this movie delivered in spades.

If you go back and read our review for the first Deadpool, we mentioned that the villain sucked hard and was boring as hell. The story also was less to be desired and weak. Well, they corrected those aspects in this sequel and exceeded my expectations. They gave Deadpool a more nuanced character arc this time around as well as a decent mission and conflict to overcome. I was actually invested in the story this time around and not there just for the gags.

But bear in mind, this is most definitely a spoof of the superhero genre. It’s way more Zucker Bros. than Russo Bros. There’s sight gags, bad/clever puns, fourth-wall breaking quips and gross-out humor all throughout. The tone is light-hearted and silly and never to be taken seriously. This is a comedy at its core.

What fail(s):  I’m sorry if it looks like I’m kissing butt here but I really don’t have a thing negative to say. I had some complaints about the first flick because, well, maybe I considered it more serious to the Marvel/comic book canon but this time I feel like they took what they knew was the best aspect of the Deadpool character and franchise, which is the humor, and just totally ran with it. But again, the story was way better and the antagonists were also better so it’s a major win to Fox and the X-Men cinematic universe.

There’s plans or rumors of them anyway that they will go ahead and make an X-Force movie and I just hope that they don’t go serious with it. From what I remember of the comics back in the beginning of X-Force, it was very similar to the other X-titles from Marvel. Mutant super team that helped people with a serious tone. Deadpool, while being an anti-hero and sometimes ally/villain to the group was oftentimes funny and irreverent but the tone of the over all books was serious. The Deadpool movies are the polar opposite of those books. As long as they don’t try to make a close as possible faithful adaptation to the X-Force books with maybe some gags from Deadpool than I’m not sure it will work. And that goes for making a semi-serious tone for X-Force with an over-the-top Deadpool either. My point is, I’m just not sure a movie without Deadpool as the center will work and Deadpool doesn’t really work in a “team-orientated” manner either. This movie made that a point in a really hilarious way.

Overall: Like I said, this was one of the best comedies of recent times. When I see comedy flicks’ trailers I hardly ever even chuckle at them. It’s a vapid empty wasteland of a genre these days. But the humor in a comic book movie like Avengers and Deadpool have me laughing out loud—that’s just weird and sad. But I guess I’ll get my humor and entertainment where I can get it. And Deadpool 2 definitely is a place to get it.

Score: 9 Full Winnie The Poohs (out of 10)