Critics think 'Deadpool 2' is more of the same
Can a sequel ever surpass the original, or will it fall flat and make no impression? In the case of Deadpool 2, results are somewhere in between, but skewing toward favorably justifying the film's existence. Mashable's Angie Han says you'll probably love it if you loved the first one, but that it may not surprise fans as Deadpool did.
For more reviews of Deadpool 2, see below.
The evolving humor
All these pieces are interesting in their own right but the connective tissue between them is about as subtle and smooth as the strained tendon in the neck of a Rob Liefeld character. Wade’s voiceover monologuing is fun when it supplements what’s on the screen, not when it’s forced to do the lion’s share of emotional exposition.
It might be that viewers have simply gotten used to the character, or it might be Reese, Wernick, and Reynolds editing themselves, but there’s more ease around the character of Deadpool now, less of an impulse to go for the obvious joke all the time. (Or at least when the joke presents itself, like recurring jabs at Batman v Superman and one “Black” Tom Cassidy, there’s more intelligence behind the reference.)
When done in good taste, the character of Deadpool is the perfect combination of crazy, coarse, and complicated. I think the crazy is obvious. While the teenage boys — well let’s face it all x-y chromosomes — will enjoy the movie for the various genitalia-inspired jokes, there is a cleverness to them overall that kept the theater laughing even with the myriad of decapitations, yard-waste industrial person mulching, and deaths of beloved friends.
At its best, the film resembles an ultraviolent Looney Tunes spinoff, with Reynolds once again going full Bugs Bunny behind either a mask or a mountain of makeup — his extremities all akimbo, his rapid-fire comic patter usually landing on just the right side of obnoxiousness. At its worst, there’s something mustily mid-’90s about its self-congratulatory rudeness, its sensibilities lying somewhere between a Farrelly brothers film and a Mountain Dew commercial.
The action
Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly:
Blonde was deliberate pulp, but its fight scenes had a messy, bone-crunching veracity that DP2 mostly trades in for chaotic cartoon violence. There’s a numbing sameness to the casual bloodshed here that makes the viewer almost long for the relative calm of the first film’s lengthy pop culture digressions.
Leitch, who directed 2017’s Atomic Blonde, has a proven eye for high-impact visuals. That bears out in Deadpool 2’s action sequences, which are never too cluttered or confusing, with individual stunts given the space to breathe and exist on their own. The action sequences serve a purpose beyond stoking adrenaline, frequently doubling as important character moments.
The film is as violent as its predecessor — at some point, someone needs to count how many bones are broken during the film’s running time; my guess is triple digits — but now there’s a refinement to the bloodshed. The film’s action sequences run from large-scale, city-smashing adventures to hand-to-hand combat inside an apartment. Former stuntman Leitch knows his way around a challenging sequence, and it shows, even in a final stand-off that requires a ton of moving pieces (and people) and a maximum of time (it’s one of the few bloated bits in a fast-moving feature).
On love and family
Deadpool 2 really wants to build on a solid emotional core about grief and family and finding a place to belong. Unfortunately, it also wants to deliver on the promises of a typical action movie sequel: more characters, more fights, more gore, and more and bigger explosions. That leaves little space to lay any emotional foundation.
Romances in superhero movies are often dull, flimsy things, but Deadpool 2’s love story provides some much-needed ballast for the film’s nonstop irreverence. It asks viewers to think about the human aspect of being super and the vulnerability that comes with it. And in delivering this romance, the film manages to feel fresh and give Deadpool some deeper meaning, by suggesting that there actually are consequences in a movie that appears not to have any.
Everyone in the film — from wild Deadpool to freaked-out Russell to crazy Cable to even Deadpool’s trusty taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni) — have clear objectives and motivations, wrapped in alluringly nutty packaging. “Deadpool 2” is outsized and absurd, but it also understands that the key to any good story is caring about the people within it. From there, you can do anything.
Deadpool 2 hits theaters Friday.
Proma Khosla is a Senior Entertainment Reporter writing about all things TV, from ranking Bridgerton crushes to composer interviews and leading Mashable's stateside coverage of Bollywood and South Asian representation. You might also catch her hosting video explainers or on Mashable's TikTok and Reels, or tweeting silly thoughts from @promawhatup.
