Deadpool & Wolverine is the promised Ryan Reynolds-Hugh Jackman mashup that has enlivened so many social media handles over the past few years. Shawn Levy’s movie goes to great lengths to steamroll doubts that short-form content can’t always be stretched into a movie.
A overly elaborate plot bring the Merc with the Mouth and the grumpy X-Man in the same frame. Deadpool (Reynolds) is desperately trying to be of service to humanity. The Avengers won’t have him. But Paradox (Matthew Macfayden) over at the Time Variance Authority – the outfit that manages the various timelines that exist in the Multiverse – gives Deadpool a shot at glory that comes disguised as a punishment.
Deadpool and an undead avatar of Wolverine (Jackman) are banished to a purgatory-like place called the Void, which is lorded over by the mean-tempered, anorexic Cassandra (Emma Corrin). Deadpool must exercise mouth and muscle to save all whom he loves, while also ensuring that Wolverine doesn’t steal the show.
Of this, there is little danger. Hugh Jackman, who was so wonderfully soulful in James Mangold’s Logan (2017), is the embodiment of accommodation in Deadpool & Wolverine. Perhaps no one else in the cast knows better that a movie with two superheroes in its title is really about only of them.
The jokes write themselves in a film that wears its contrivance proudly and gleefully admits that it barely has any reason to exist beyond fan service. The 128-minute film is lively, fast-paced and slickly silly. But for all its smutty cleverness, Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t recast the Marvel movie template as much as reaffirm it.
A steady patter of meta-gags about how Hollywood studios negotiate copyright and greenlight will be amusing to film industry insiders and utterly mystifying to ordinary viewers. For this cohort, Deadpool & Wolverine rolls out graphic comic book-style carnage, self-consciously adolescent comedy, and a raft of special appearances.
Some of the best visual effects centre around Emma Corrin’s Cassandra, who manipulates her victims in horrible ways. Channing Tatum has a sensational cameo. The presence of an unlovely canine specimen (the mixed-breed Peggy, winner of Britain’s ugliest dog contest) suggests that Deadpool & Wolverine is open to all manner of gimmickry.
Ryan Reynolds’s ceaseless prattling – hilarious, irreverent, profane – begins with the opening credits and carries over all the way to the two post-credits scenes. Watching – or rather listening – to Reynolds hard-sell logorrhea from behind a mask is like being at a soiree with a highly performative guest. Times flies in Deadpool’s presence, as it does in the presence of the life of the party. But if you are hard-pressed to remember anything afterwards, that’s perfectly fine too.
Reynolds sucks the air out of the movie, in a way that makes it appear that he’s doing everyone around him a favour. Were it not for Reynolds’s comic gifts, Deadpool & Wolverine might have been enervating, insufferable even.
The movie is a Ryan Reynolds show all the way. No wonder the Avengers don’t want him.
