Deadpool & Wolverine (2024 | USA | 127 minutes | Shawn Levy)

Deadpool & Wolverine is something else. It’s a big mess of a movie, much of it entertaining, much of it tiresome. It throws so much at the wall, some of it sticks. It probably will delight a lot of Marvel fans. And even by my standards, it contains a lot of dick jokes.

The plot doesn’t so much matter, as with a lot of movies like this, but it involves Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, of course) being kidnapped and forced to help hasten the end of his own timeline at the behest of the villain Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen). Let me just say here that Mr. Paradox might be the least intimidating villain I’ve ever seen in a comic book movie, and I’ve once reviewed a movie where a character throws polka dots. He looks like Peyton Manning if he went into accounting instead of football and I think, with enough alcohol, I could take him in a bar fight. Thanos he ain’t.

Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) is much more daunting, and bald. She rules something called “the Void.”

Obviously Deadpool can’t do this alone so he enlists the help of Wolverine (Hugh Jassckman), who he both digs up from the grave and finds drunk in a bar (it’s the timeline thing again). Together, the kick a lot of ass and seem to be enjoying themselves. There’s pretty good chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman, even if Jackman does seem to wish he were elsewhere at times.

The Deadpool/Marvel formula continues apace: plenty of butts are kicked and even more jokes are cracked, but with everything seeming to be turbocharged to eleven. Deadpool doesn’t simply break the fourth wall, but does to it what Controlled Demolition, Inc. did to the Kingdome. Rob Delaney’s mustache is even more lustrous than previous installments. I think everyone pretty much now knows what to expect from a Deadpool movie already, and if you like it already, you’ll like Deadpool & Wolverine. If you’re nonplussed, you’re not likely to be converted.

What Deadpool & Wolverine does is deliver what Marvel fans want in spades. There are plenty of easter eggs throughout and the cameos from previous Marvel films goes back almost thirty years. I won’t say which because I saw a post on Reddit the other day where someone melted down over “spoilers” that was really just someone else posting a photo from the trailer. But who’s that on the bus? And why does Lady Deadpool look like Divine in Pink Flamingos?

My plus-one called Deadpool & Wolverine “a good popcorn movie,” and I think that’s basically correct. It is often very funny and action-packed but it can also grow tedious (particularly the fourth-wall-breaking). But it delivers what it promises, so that’s a plus.

One thing that I can definitively say is that of all of the blockbuster movies coming out this summer, Deadpool & Wolverine is unequivocally, undeniably, one of them.

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Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now.