Review: Deadpool 2

-SPOILER WARNING-

The original ‘Deadpool’ was at its heart a romance flick parodying superhero films, while ‘Deadpool 2’ continues the self-aware humour but having a heavy focus on family as it continues to follow Ryan Reynolds’s portrayal as Deadpool while continuing to make the audience to laugh.

The humour in ‘Deadpool 2’ is an improvement to the original. This time there was a lot less crude humour, with the film opting for more dark and visual humour. This worked to the film’s advantage – most of the time. There was an abundance of jokes and this caused a lot of jokes to fall flat or the film would grind to halt to keep repeating the same joke. For example, at one point in the film Deadpool is in “full Winnie-The-Pooh mode” and the joke is stretched on for far too long. However some of the better humour came in the form of Deadpool showing the audience that in Blind Al’s apartment there was really a cure for blindness (as he stated in ‘Deadpool’ in a joking manner), the opening credits being a clear parody to the recent ‘007’ films and the end credits scene having Deadpool kill Ryan Reynolds before he can read the script for the commercial failure of ‘Green Lantern’.

Ryan Reynolds’s continues his amazing performance of Deadpool and is still the biggest stand out in the cast. A lot of the original cast return, with one of the funniest being Karan Soni’s ‘Dopinder’ but the film also introduces a lot of new cast members such as Zazie Beetz as ‘Domino’ and Josh Brolin as ‘Cable’ whom are great additions to the cast. Unfortunately most of the new and old cast members feel under used and lacking.

One of the main disadvantages of the film is that it felt like nothing happened. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Russel (Julian Dennison) seem to be the only characters with any growth to them and this caused Cable (Josh Brolin) to feel really under developed and wasted. As the stakes of ‘Deadpool 2’ revolve around Cable’s future, having Cable underdeveloped meant that the audience didn’t feel any connection to the stakes and ultimately it felt like nothing was achieved. Another factor working against the predictable plot of the film was that the pacing was too fast and this caused characters to move from scene to scene to fast. This made the film feel more like cartoon than a blockbuster film.

Not only did the film feel like a cartoon, sometimes it looked like one. The action, while fun and entertaining, looked more like two action figures hitting off each other. While this didn’t seem notable from ‘Deadpool’ or ‘Domino’, it was very apparent when the surprise villain, ‘Juggernaut’, appeared.

One thing that surprised me was how emotional the film could be at some points. This was noteable at the beginning and end of the film. But most of these scenes were sadly uncut with humour which also took away most of the emotional impact. For example, a climactic scene of the film had “Tomorrow” from the Annie soundtrack playing.

The soundtrack was one of the best things about the film and it was incredibly diverse. It went from Skrillex to Dolly Parton to AC/DC to Cher! It was a joy to hear these songs with my favourite being “Take-on-me” by A-Ha during the scenes with Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin.

Overall, ‘Deadpool 2’ is a fun and entertaining film with a lot of flaws such as under developed characters and jokes that fell flat. However most of the jokes do land and will make you laugh. If you liked the first ‘Deadpool’ you will love ‘Deadpool 2’.