In many of my blog posts, this is the paragraph where I insert a brief synopsis of the show/movie/book/game I'm here to blog about. And while there is a story here, about protecting a decaying timeline and escaping from a form of purgatory, all the movie is really promising is what it says on the label: a team-up of these two characters (and the actors who've been playing them for years).
From that standpoint, Deadpool & Wolverine is a huge success. It's a madcap joke machine, so much so that it's hard to talk about without turning into Saturday Night Live's classic "The Chris Farley Show" sketch. ("Remember when that happened? That was awesome.") You get sight gags, wordplay, running gags.... a touch of high-brow and a lot of low-brow.... plenty of extremely niche jokes that maybe only a handful of people in a theater would laugh at, which is fine, because there will be 20 more jokes in the next two minutes for everybody else.
They're generally super-funny. More importantly, a lot of them are really inspired and clever. Cameo appearances are used to especially hilarious and unexpected effect. Deadpool's trademark fourth wall breaks are used just as often to refer to things far outside the Marvel universe, inviting people to join in the fun if they can't recite chapter and verse (issue and page) on comic book minutia. Deadpool & Wolverine is a joyful, hilarious movie to watch.
All that said... I actually watched Deadpool 2 the night before going to see it -- and if you're paying attention to the story itself? Deadpool 2 (and, as I recall, the first Deadpool before it) are downright masterpieces compared to the shoddy, threadbare nature of the story in this threequel. The onset of jeopardy here is painfully arbitrary. It's also complicated, exposition-heavy, and requires so much "extracurricular reading" (that's: viewing/memory of other content in the Marvel universe), that the movie can't even actually start with it; it's all so tedious that a flashback structure is required just to make sure something entertaining kicks off the movie. (A deliriously funny opening credits sequence.)
A complicated act one somehow gives way to an almost totally unrelated act two where all new elements have to be introduced. Then an especially Macguffin-driven act three wraps it all up in a sloppily tied bow. And that's not even getting into the many plot holes throughout -- often not mere nitpicks, but foundational narrative questions where the story contradicts basic tenets it sets in place, or fails to consider obvious "but what about?" questions by the concepts it asserts. It's really not a good story.
It's also a story that takes much of what was great about Deadpools 1 and 2 and boxes them in the attic. While it's true that no one went to a Deadpool movie to see Blind Al, Domino, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Colossus, or Dopinder -- those elements were actually some of the funniest parts of those earlier movies. Some of them aren't in Deadpool & Wolverine at all, and even the characters who are get even less screen time than many of the jokey cameos I mentioned earlier. Sure, Ryan Reynolds was always the best thing about the Deadpool movies... but not the only good thing about the Deadpool movies. And it's a bit of a disappointment to lose that other great stuff.
But ultimately, the movie is faithfully executing the "contract" you "sign" in seeing it. To a large extent, it doesn't matter how bad the story is; the story is just a bare bones framework to get the two title characters together. It doesn't matter if there are no meaningful moments for any other character from Deadpool or Deadpool 2; the point here is to make as much time as possible for "Deadpool & Wolverine." So my criticisms, no matter how apt I may think they are, can kind of only weigh so much in the final analysis.
And in that final analysis? This movie makes you laugh a lot. It's a fun buddy cop movie in a superhero costume, with jokes that work, an irrepressible wit, and tons of action. So ultimately, I'll give Deadpool & Wolverine a B+. I enjoyed it that much. Better not to dwell on its shortcomings.
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