DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE (B+) - If I ever live to see the day when we don't have anything resembling "cinema" anymore, I'll think of this head-spinning vulgar gag-fest masquerading in super-hero body suits. That applies to the death of movies either literally or figuratively.
You would be wise to be wary of a third entry in the "Deadpool" series. I farmed out the first one to a fan of Marvel movies, though I did go back to view it myself to prepare for the sequel, in 2018. Choose any excerpt from that 2018 review, and it would apply to this latest one, which teams Ryan Reynolds in the title role with Hugh Jackman's reanimated Wolverine from the X-Men series. For example: "Reynolds besieges the viewer with randy one-liners, fleeting pop-culture references, and obscure Marvel call-backs (and loopy call-backs to call-backs)." Check.
This movie is more self-aware than Deepak Chopra. It doesn't break the fourth wall so much as bulldoze through it; Reynolds does it so powerfully you might expect someone to yell out, "Hey, Kool-Aid!" The references fly by at warp speed. Even if you are not an obsessive Marvel nerd or a subscriber to the paper edition of Variety, you can still enjoy the random lines you manage to catch in this blizzard of pop-culture references. It's easy to succumb to the shotgun approach to screenwriting. The words pelt you as much as the CGI weapons do. It's an endearingly funny form of entertainment.
Reynolds and crew up the ante here in two ways. First, the script is riddled with not just puerile humor but hyperactive homo-erotica that devolves into multiple anal-rape jokes. Second, the snarky asides to the camera wink not only at the Marvel universe but also to the movie studios and backroom shenanigans that resulted in Disney gobbling up Fox's studio assets since the last film hoovered up bajillions at the box office. (Someone counted, and there are five such references.) Uncle Walt must be proud. (Seriously, he seemed like one dark dude who would appreciate a good butt-fucking joke.) Also, a lot of guys get gored in the crotch by Wolverine's claws, for good measure.
It's all as bleak as it is relentlessly aiming to be hilarious. Maybe one day we'll look back on 2024 when there was an endless budget for the third film in a super-hero series, you hired five writers (including Reynolds and director Shawn Levy), you snapped your fingers and people like Channing Tatum and Jennifer Garner show up in glorified cameos, you can charge $19 for a ticket to a standard screening, you mock the former studio by half-burying its memorable logo in a scene of post-apocalyptic devastation (CGI, of course), you blow up stuff for fun, you stuff scores of people in Deadpool costumes just for fun (were some CGI?), money is no object when it comes to song rights, and you can mock the whole production process in every other scene with self-referential disdain. What an embarrassment of riches now, and in the future when we fondly look back because we are so desperate to suppress the reality of the mid-century water wars.
But darn it, it's still 2024, and we have the luxury of spending our disposable income on frivolous guilty pleasures. And Ryan Reynolds is a classic movie star. He's so winkingly Canadian that you just want to wag your finger at him and pinch his cheeks. So naughty, this one. Reynolds even pulls double duty as a de-aged Fabio-like alternative-universe nice-guy Deadpool (actually called Nicepool), all young and handsome, fond of French kissing his mop of a little dog and in need of a cult de-programming. Deadpool's geeky alter-ego, Wade Wilson, is a welcome wake-up call, as he cuts a little too sharply with his working-class satire of us wage slaves.
Jackman gives as good as he takes as Wolverine, who gets pulled out of a bar for this latest mission to save the world. Jon Favreau is wonderfully deadpan in a set-up scene that informs the audience that Robert Downey Jr. won't be showing up as Iron Man. His banter with Reynolds is the best of the movie.
The jokes are so plentiful that the writers -- like Major League ballplayers these days -- need only hit about .230 to be considered successful. Reynolds and Leslie Uggams go toe-to-toe rattling off euphemisms for cocaine -- Forrest Bump, White Girl Interrupted -- as if they were actually fighting over the dregs of an eight-ball. Deadpool likes to refer to a lie as "an educated wish." He accuses a sloshed Wolverine of having "whiskey-dick of the claws." He tells Blind Al (Uggams): "If you could hear the look on my face, you'd smell how sad I am." And when Wolverine is tired of Deadpool's verbal diarrhea and, in a menacing tone, dares Deadpool to utter just one more word, the boy wonder pauses and eventually complies: "Gubernatorial."
Yes, it's all such mindless fun. I will say, though, whatever ketamine-fueled algorithm that spat out the final script has a pretty heavy third-act moment of true bonding up its sleeve. There is actually a method to this madness, and Reynolds and Jackman certainly know how to work an audience.
So what's a couple hundred million in service of providing an air-conditioned refuge from the high-desert heat in August? So what if the billion dollars in profit will get plowed back into a four-qel or reduced to powder form and snorted off various parts of bodies lolling around Ibiza. Whatever balm you need to face down our modern existential threats as we peer over the edge into the Void ...
BONUS TRACKS
The meta mania builds to such a frenzy that it comes out the other side, and the use of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" is not only appropriate to the climax but it is somehow emotionally effective:
And what's a bar scene without some pure-grain Patsy Cline sloshing through "You Belong to Me":
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