Deadpool & Wolverine

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Matthew Macfadyen, Brianna Hildebrand, Karan Soni

Director: Shawn Levy

Based on characters created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

After being rejected by The Avengers, Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has decided to end things with Vanessa (Baccarin), retired from being Deadpool and is living a mundane life as a car salesman with Peter (Delaney). After being taken by the Time Variance Authority, an agent named Mr. Paradox (Macfadyen) informs Wade that his timeline is collapsing due to its "anchor being" having died. That anchor being happens to be Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman). In order to save his timeline and potentially join the ranks of the mighty Avengers, Wade must find and convince a Wolverine from a different timeline to help him save the ones he loves.

Marvel movies have had a tough run recently with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Thor: Love and Thunder and The Marvels all under performing at the box office. Hoping to turn things around, the Disney arm of Marvel has decided to embrace one of the more beloved and riskier properties that they acquired from Fox: Deadpool. The fourth wall breaking, profane and hyper violent superhero movies have a huge audience and allows Disney to take a chance with a character whose rating theoretically cuts off a large portion of their audience, families. Sprinkle in the return of Jackman to a role he had originally said he wouldn't return to and Disney felt this was a risk well worth taking,

And I would have to agree that the risk was worth it. With the exception of maybe the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this is the closest that Disney has come to a full-on comedy film. And boy is it just a lot of fun, which is exactly what you want from a movie like this.

The jokes and one-liners come quick, which make this a very re-watchable film. A lot of the humor is incredibly meta, with Deadpool being able to comment on the state of the MCU, the personal lives of the actors playing the characters and so on. I applaud Disney for making fun of themselves and allowing Reynolds to seemingly run wild with the jokes. But as with the previous Deadpool films, there is a strong emotional core to the film and by the time the credits roll you will leave satisfied.

Reynolds can play Wade/Deadpool in this sleep at this point and its hard to not associate the character as just an extension of the actor's personality. Despite the crass nature of his jokes, Reynolds never takes Wade into unlikable territory. Similarly, Jackman jumps back into the role of Logan/Wolverine as if he never left. The movie goes to great lengths to make sure it doesn't tarnish the ending of Logan while allowing Jackman a different take on the character. Jackman is very clearly having a blast and relishes every opportunity to drop an f-bomb. His chemistry with Reynolds is impeccable, building off their real life friendship, and reminding us why we fell in love with these characters in the first place.

Shawn Levy (Free Guy, The Adam Project, Reel Steel) steps into the director's chair and rightfully gives Reynolds and Jackman the spotlight. There are some fun action scenes, including a fight scene with multitudes of Deadpools, but the action feels secondary to the comedy.

I do have some minor issues with the movie, one of which also hurt the aforementioned Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. One is that this movie feels bigger than the previous two films. The first movie was a labor of love for Reynolds and got made despite them running out of money. The second film did have a bigger budget but by keeping the X-Men on the periphery of the story, it felt more self-contained and smaller in scale. With this one, it felt unnecessarily bigger in scale, tying into the multiverse and allowing for a multitude of cameos from characters that had previously been unavailable or out of reach for the story. The cameos are great, including a couple that made me cheer loudly in the theater, but it also feels shoehorned in at times just to wink at the audience.

I also hate that we live in a time where the marketing will ruin some of the surprises the writers and film makers have in store for audiences. The trailers didn't ruin all of them for this movie, but it also ruined a couple biggers cameos that would have worked a lot better had we not known about them going in. One in particular didn't hit as hard emotionally because I knew it was coming.

In the end, this is a very entertaining and frequently hilarious entry into the MCU. Reynolds and Jackman are great and give the film a beating heart in between the jokes. I hope Disney learns the right lessons from this movie (spoiler alert: they won't) and is able to right the ship going forward.

Grade: B+