Is this film worth my time? Deadpool 2 is a middle level lowbrow action comedy for middle-schoolers and muddled stoners alike. If you’re cool spending your time with 3rd– rate live action South Park, who am I to judge? Check your brain at the door.
1 Hour 59 Minutes, R for graphic dismemberment, sodomy, tiny genitalia
Fair Value Rating of Deadpool 2: $5.00.
Who is this film perfect for? Are you an adolescent boy in the 7th or 8th grade? Or at you a sufficient level of alcoholic or narcotic impairment as to resemble one, mentally?
Who will not like this film? People who got tired of edgy post-modernist 4th wall breaking snark back when Limp Bizkit was a thing. Adults. Watching this film made me realize that maturity is when you finally top off on prison rape jokes and penis comedy. You have a finite threshold in your life for that humor- after a certain point it wears off.
If you need a reason to remember why the 90s sucked, here it is. Lots of edginess with very little understanding of where the edge actually is, nowadays. Deadpool 2 has all the charm of a kids first time on 4chan, awkwardly cute in the total incomprehension of what provocation actually is.
Deadpool Exists Because Rob Liefeld wanted Spiderman to tell Dirty Jokes. That’s pretty much it- what if the web-slinger used blue humor. He was meant to be second banana to Cable (played with grizzly snarliness by Josh Brolin in this film), but like jokesters often are, he eclipsed the grimdark protagonist of X-Force. Of course, as a Liefeld creation, he’s got katanas, and a gun fetish.
That being said, Deadpool works at its best when its parodying X-Force, the source comic that developed Deadpool. X-Force was the 90s-est possible iteration of the X-Men- what if the X-men were commandos? And one died on every mission? And everybody was grim and hardened and cynical?
What is the summary of this film’s concept? Terminator 2, but if John Connor was played by Eric Cartman instead of Eddie Furlong.
What’s Funnier than Cancer? Endless mugging at the 4th Wall. It can be funny, once, to mention how sucky the plot is. After that, though, you’re only reminding the audience of how much the script has failed.
How does this film compare to others like it? Better than Suicide Squad, which is to say as competent as walking on a flat sidewalk without tripping. But it’s not as light on the feet as the first Deadpool, which benefited from the terrific comic chemistry of Ryan Reynolds and Morena Bacarrin. Other recurring comedies with Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), Dopinder the cabbie (Karan Soni), and Weasel (TJ Miller) also suffer from diminishing returns.
What works in this film? Zazie Beetz, as Domino, saves every scene that she’s in. Shes the one character that seems to be having fun, rather than doing a young child’s imagination of a cussing Marine drill sergeant. If this movie could have been Domino, rather than Deadpool 2, everybody would be having a better time.
What fails in this film? This film has a lot of actors tripping over their expletives. When you say the word Fuck enough times, it just sounds like bok, like you’re clucking like a Chicken. That’s what a lot of the lines are in here. It’s not David Mamet. There’s a way to use obscenity in comedy to enhance your punchlines, and there’s a way to use obscenity in comedy to drown your jokes. Deadpool 2 does the latter more often than the former.