advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Deadpool 2 review: A disjointed mess

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie so at odds with itself as Deadpool 2 is.

Instead of being a straightforward superhero movie with fun jokes and wall breaking, we’re instead given something that stretches out scene after scene that will have you begging for the next transition.

This stems from its long winded and needlessly complex story. As shown in the trailer, Cable (Josh Brolin) travels back in time to kill a mutant child (Russel played by Julian Dennison) who grows up to do horrible things.

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has to stop Cable, and creates his own superhero team in the X-Force.

Sounds simple enough, right? Super powered bad guy from the future pulls a Terminator to change the future and some less known heroes try to stop him with a lot of CGI action.

Unfortunately there’s multiple side stories and detours that offer a long winded path to those set pieces and jokes.

The most egregious is Deapool’s “heartfelt” romantic story, which gives him the motivation to save Russel from Cable after experiencing a loss of his own.

Now there’s nothing wrong with introducing more serious elements to a comedic movie, but the writing here just isn’t good enough to pull that off.

As for the writing of the jokes, it’s a mixed bag. There are a few that really hit the spot with the best ones being visual gags instead of dialogue.

If you liked how the jokes were done in the first movie, you will like the ones here, even if they do sometimes linger on for too long and torture out some comedy.

The cast bringing the lacklustre script together was surprisingly solid with some exceptions.

Brolin’s performance was very flat. While this is in line with the character, it really affected the scenes he was in. We’re not expecting character growth in a movie like this, but we could have had a tiny bit more from Cable.

The film does occasionally hint at how Cable came to be a time traveller with a metal arm, but that’s not explored here. Brolin has signed on to be in more of the Deadpool films, so maybe they’re saving that for the future.

The other problem is Dennison. His performance just wasn’t convincing, especially because of his place in the movie. Russel is supposed to be a tragic character that is looking for revenge and finally redemption, but Dennison just fell short of giving us this.

Whenever Russel was in a scene you’re left wanting to get back to Deadpool or even Cable.

The other characters range from annoying to pointless. Karan Soni – playing  Dopinder, the cab driver from the first movie – is just annoying and should have been left out entirely.

The X-Force gets very little screen time and ends up being pointless. Again, we’ll probably see more of them in future movies, but they also could have been cut to save time because the overall plot really wouldn’t have changed much.

The rest of the movie is at least visually interesting and, while the CGI can look a bit rubbery sometimes, it’s not a deal breaker. The music was also a good selection of familiar tracks and they even got Céline Dion to create an original piece just for the movie.

The final few nails in Deadpool 2’s coffin are extremely unfavourable comparisons to Infinity War.

While it may not be entirely fair to compare the two, they are currently playing in theatre vying for the same tickets.

Where Infinity War was extremely tight without a wasted second, Deadpool 2 meanders from scene to scene. It lingers on certain aspects for way too long and it feels like it should have been cut down from two hours to the standard 90 minutes.

The only points this movie can win against Infinity War is the low barrier to entry for those not invested in the MCU but, even then, those people may still find the Avengers movie a better use of their money.

The only other huge positive this movie has is a second post-credits scene that may be the best one yet. It will probably be on YouTube before next week, but it is a pleasure after sitting through this film.

 

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement