Score: 3.5/4
There are no spoilers in this critique of Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine, aside from what the trailers and posters have already told us. A movie that delivers on this level is best experienced with minimal knowledge, aside from the years of being bombarded with the best and worst of comic book cinema. The highly unlikely success of Deadpool, the “merc with the mouth” played by Ryan Reynolds, peaks with this third entry, one of those rare summer movie experiences that lives up to an impossible amount of hype.
The story has Deadpool, living his day-to-day life as Wade Davis, needing to prove himself once more, donning the form-fitting uniform and attempting to resurrect Logan, the legendary X- Man warrior known as The Wolverine, played again by Hugh Jackman.
A rare and major treat (for this or any summer movie) is how unpredictable it is, as the story is free to go anywhere, or just go bonkers. It often settles for both at the same time. Let’s talk about the missteps: playing a central villain, Matthew Macfadyen tries too hard to hold his own and gives an awkward performance. Another of the bad guys, played by Emma Corrin, has a seen-it-before quality and a weird resemblance to Tom Hardy in Star Trek: Nemesis that is oddly never noted. Also, just because the movie openly jokes about how overlong it is, that doesn’t mean it actually gets away with being an overextended 127 minutes.
In terms of tone, this is oddly similar to the recent The Fall Guy, which was also a cheeky popcorn parody that teases Hollywood while blowing stuff up, though this is the far better summer movie.
Reynolds continues to demonstrate that, after some hits and misses early on, he has found a character and vehicle perfectly attuned to his skill set. Outside of Buried (2010) and The Nines (2007), Reynolds rarely succeeds outside of comedy; like Chevy Chase, Reynolds is too sarcastic to convey sincerity (the recent IF is further proof of this). Here, he’s in his element, though a few characters mentioned how they wish he would just stop talking for once and I occasionally agreed.
Yet, despite the joy of watching Reynolds bask in returning to form after a six-year break from his franchise, it’s Jackman’s excellent performance that centers this.
The screenplay credits five writers, including Reynolds and Levy. The plot is a thinly veiled tease on how franchises are created and discarded in Hollywood. It’s sometimes too on the nose, and the narrative works better when focusing on how life’s failures and successes define our worth in middle age. Jackman’s scenes have enough dramatic heft to make one almost forget that the movie is a giant tease that dares you to take it seriously.
The highly touted use of the first-ever R-rating for a Marvel movie impresses, as the gore and profanity rarely take more than a few minutes to reload. A fight scene that mimics the most legendary sequence from Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) is a knockout, as are the multiple scenes when the title characters find their verbal battles escalating into real ones.
For a movie this proudly crass and juvenile, there are touches here (like the audacity of the opening credits sequence) that feel downright radical. If we hadn’t had decades of South Park (1997-Present), everything here would feel like even more delightfully jolting than it actually is. The bottom line is that Deadpool & Wolverine is frequently hilarious, and offers some of the year’s wildest surprise cameo appearances and satisfyingly gnarly fight scenes. There are also some ripe shots made at big-budget studio films that lack conviction, personality and take no risks, which is not the issue with this movie.
By the way, this isn’t the first R-rated Disney movie. That distinction goes to Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) and any subsequent R-rated movie from Touchstone Pictures, which was a Disney label used to hide how the company wanted to release “grown-up” movies that didn’t have the Disney castle logo in the opening credits. The hype that Disney has never gone R before is untrue. However, they’ve rarely made something this raw and self-mocking before, so, hooray for progress.
