Deadpool 2 **** (2018, Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz) – Movie Review

Deadpool 2 is two outrageously cynical hours of non-stop bad-ass bad taste laughs and extreme comic-book violence as Ryan Reynolds returns as the foul-mouthed mutant mercenary Wade Wilson (aka Deadpool of course). It is quite a tribute to ‘the second coming’ that the fun never flags. A couple of times only in the entire two hours it seems like it might, but then it doesn’t.

It keeps moving hectically and dynamically along. No doubt it is a triumph of editing as well as of stunts and CGI. It really is very darned slick. Everyone can congratulate themselves on a job well done. It perhaps doesn’t really make any sense at all, but it seems to while you are watching it. By the way, is that actually Reynolds in the silly suit ever in the movie? Who cares!

This time Wade brings together a team of rogue mutants to protect young New Zealand boy Russell (Julian Dennison) from brutal mutant Cable (Josh Brolin), who has travelled back in time to kill the boy, who possesses impressive fire-chucking supernatural abilities.

Anything goes in the sometime gross-out comedy as the gags frequently cross several lines, making light of religion, sex, racism, sexism and just plain bad behaviour. It is all quite dodgy. Deadpool is a very bad role model. He is of course the grown-up version of the bad boy that most teenage boys would like to be, though only just grown-up, of course. Everybody likes seeing men behave like kids and get away with it scot free. That’s really the appeal of Deadpool. We know we can’t do this in the crappy thing called real life, so we can get on down to the movies and pretend.

The jokes come so thick and fast, and some of them are muttered asides, so it’s hard to catch them all. That should sell quite a few tickets for repeat viewings.

Julian Dennison plays New Zealand boy Russell.

Dennison (from Hunt for the Wilderpeople), Brolin and Zazie Beetz as Domino are huge assets to the cast. But it is Reynolds’s show and he’s a star. Maybe it’s just me, but is this sequel a shade better than the first film? Nothing succeeds like success, and they are on a roll. Or should that be nothing succeeds like excess.

On 28 December 2019, Ryan Reynolds confirmed that Deadpool 3 is coming, and will now be in the hands of Marvel Studios.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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Ryan Reynolds back the old days in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).