Film review: Deadpool 2 (2018), directed by David Leitch
tl;dr: If you liked the first one, you’ll like the second.
Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is doing a great job hunting down bad guys as Deadpool. Things are going great with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) too and life couldn’t be better.
Well, until life becomes very complicated and Deadpool finds himself at the X-Mansion as an X-Men intern. When he and his old chums Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) respond to an incident at a “pray the mutant away” type orphanage headed by Eddie Marsan, he realises that the children are mistreated. Especially seeing as how one of them, Russell “Firefist” Collins (Julian Dennison), is threatening to go nuclear. As luck would have it, Deadpool and Russell get thrown in mutant jail.
Things don’t exactly get better from there for either of them. Not when you’ve got a cybernetic hit man (Josh Brolin) after you, hell-bent on revenge for a crime you haven’t even committed yet. Maybe you need to put your own team together?
Returning characters are of course bar owner Weasel (TJ Miller), Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), and taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni).
Fans of the original comics will know everything about X-Force, which is what Deadpool calls his specially assembled gang of would-be superheroes. There’s Domino (Zazie Beetz), who’s so extremely lucky it’s a superpower; Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), who claims to be an alien with super human abilities; Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), who spits acid; Bedlam (Terry Crews), who can disrupt electromagnetic fields; Vanisher (Brad Pitt, blink and you’ll miss it), who’s invisible; and, uh, Peter (Rob Delaney), who’s just happy to be there.
There’s a lot of meta stuff going on, as you would expect from having seen the first film, and, I’m told, even more so if you’ve read the comics. The fourth wall is broken constantly, but that’s what makes this film franchise fun. It gives Deadpool a very distinctive style from any of the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – because, let’s face it, they can get kinda samey.
I was thrilled to see Julian Dennison in big role, but he feels under-utilised, which is such a shame because he was terrific in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. All the rest of the cast are great fun to watch too, but I expected no less.
One thing that hit me while watching the trailer (aside from “hey, isn’t that Rob Delaney?!”) was the was that if someone ever does a live action version of Phineas & Ferb as adults, for the love of Candace and Jeremy, Karan Soni should be cast as Baljeet! He’s the spitting image of him!
Anyhoo. Deadpool 2 is very funny and very violent and if you liked it the first time you’ll like it again. I’m not sure if I prefer this one or the original, but it doesn’t really matter. I came to the cinema to have a chuckle and chuckles were definitely had. Now I only hope there’s a Deadpool cameo in the second Infinity War movie.
4 out of 5 parachuting accidents.
