'Deadpool and Wolverine' movie review with Casey T. Allen

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems the variety of movie options in theaters this summer is as barren as my love life. So the superhero comedy Deadpool & Wolverine has appeared like an oasis in a bland, monotonous desert this season for a lot of people (including me). Now that I’ve reached this oasis, it didn’t totally quench my thirst.

After the excitement of the first two Deadpool films from 2016 and 2018, Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy, 2021) is back in the red & black costume playing the wisecracking mischievous mercenary. This second sequel starts with our swearing, sarcastic anti-hero working at a used car dealership and wearing a toupee. But his ordinary civilian boredom stops when he’s recruited by a government office called the Time Variance Authority to travel through the multiverse and save another universe from destruction. But instead of following orders, Deadpool decides to save his own universe from approaching oblivion and goes to a few other universes to recruit a Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, Logan, 2017), who’s still alive, for some reinforcements.

So let me be honest, that explanation might not be totally accurate. I’m still hazy on some of the details in this film, because the exposition at the beginning is so long and so convoluted. There’s special technology for Deadpool to travel through the multiverse. There’s a naturally dying timeline that can’t be reversed. And one of the bad guys has built a machine called a “time ripper” capable of destroying entire universes! It felt like the team of five screenwriters (which includes Mr. Reynolds) was desperately grasping for an interesting story to even allow this film to exist. So with the horribly shoddy premise to work from, Deadpool & Wolverine is almost dead on arrival.

But Ryan Reynolds’ spirited performance keeps this film somewhat fun. Like the two previous films, he gives perfectly timed jokes filled with raunchy bluntness, sexual innuendo, and real-life jabs at the 20th Century Fox and Disney movie studios. But, of course, this style of humor is not new for this film. All Deadpool fans have seen these sorts of jokes before. This film’s biggest boast, or biggest draw for viewers, is its long list of surprise appearances by famous actors playing mostly forgotten comic book characters. That part is entertaining, and the dirty adult humor had me laughing, or silently in shock, multiple times in the movie theater.

Hugh Jackman, sadly, is given nothing to do but repeatedly grumble unhappily, kill lots of people, and look tiredly in every direction. Maybe because Ryan Reynolds has worked with this director before on the action films The Adam Project (2022) and Free Guy (2021), they had too strong a rapport with each other to let Hugh Jackman in on more fun. (This director I’m referring to is the Canadian, Shawn Levy.)

By the time the fourth, large scale, extended, bloody fight scene started near the film’s climax, I thought, “Okay, boys. I’m ready for my lobotomy now.” With a runtime of two hours and eight minutes, this one could easily have been a minimum of 20 minutes shorter. As the 34th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I walked away from this one thinking it was just okay. Not a disaster….but merely satisfactory. And aren’t we done with the MCU now? Is anyone else ready to move onto new frontiers?

And earning $211 million in its opening weekend has reminded us there’s apparently still an audience for these flashy, bro-centered, R-rated, superhero adventures. But not for viewers under 17 of course. (Wink wink!)