A One Mann’s Movies review of “Deadpool & Wolverine” (2024).
“Deadpool & Wolverine” (or effectively “Deadpool 3”) is the much-anticipated sequel that cinemas up and down the country are hoping is going to be “Marvel Jesus” and resurrect their flagging box office numbers. And I think it will do very good business since it is very funny and made me laugh a lot. But it feels like a frenetic improvised mess of a movie.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has hung up his Deadpool suit, stapled a ‘syrup’ to his head and is pursuing a boring existence as 2nd hand car salesman. But he is abducted by the Time Variance Authority, headed up by Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), since the whole fabric of his multiverse is unravelling due to the death of Logan (Hugh Jackman).
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong bloody violence, injury detail, sex references, very strong language”.) This is not just violent… it is CRAZY VIOLENT. I think it is only because the violence is so cartoonish in nature that it escapes getting away without an “18” certificate.
Talent:
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Mathew Macfadyen, John Favreau,
Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams.
Directed by: Shawn Levy.
Written by: Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy.
Twitter Handle: #Deadpoolmovie.
Running Time: 2h 7m.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” Summary:
Positives:
- Lots of laugh out loud moments
- Less ‘breaking of the 4th wall’: more a complete demolition job.
- A whole host of surprising cameos.
Negatives:
- The constant barrage of gags becomes tiresome.
- It’s a mess of a story: everything is thrown at the wall to see what sticks.
- Poor sound mixing: sound of the dialogue is completely inaudible.
Review of “Deadpool & Wolverine”:
A lot of laughs.
You know from the opening Marvel production logo, with Deadpool humming along to Michael Giacchino’s epic Marvel theme, that this is going to be high-blasphemy for ‘serious’ Marvel fans. And so it turns out to be. The opening of the film – the fight in the snow shown in the trailer – is hilarious based on the weapons that Deadpool is using! And the laughs continue throughout, with some very funny sight gags and many (MANY) funny incidents where the fourth wall is smashed down. Interestingly, many of these scenes differ from the versions shown in the trailer, illustrating the sort of freewheeling improvisation that the actors were clearly following in the different takes.
But… this is 2 Hours with Chandler Bing.
There was a moment in this movie where a scene from “Friends” came to mind. (This one). It’s the one where Chandler and Monica have just come back from honeymoon and have been trying, unsuccessfully, to impress a cute couple called Jenny and Greg. Monica says to Chandler “You did tell an awful lot of jokes…. Joke, joke, joke, blah, blah, blah…”. I was reminded of this since Reynold’s Deadpool does get to become full Chandler-on-steroids by the end of the film…. ‘joke, joke, Fox, blah, blah, Disney, blah, blah”. Many of these gags land and are funny. Others fall like a dead-weight to the floor. But either way you feel exhausted as smoke rises from the gag-o-meter and it then gives up and explodes.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think Ryan Reynolds is a genius in the way in which he can create mesmerising short-form comic content, whether it’s poking fun at his long-suffering friend Rob McElhenney (who has a cameo as one of the “pegging” guards in this film) or his adverts for Aviation Gin. There’s nobody does it better. But stretch that out for over 2 hours and – for me – it became a bit tiresome.
Easter eggs and cameos a plenty
There are a whole host of cameo appearances in this film, with some of them being really epic and surprising. (I obviously can’t go into details as that would spoil it for everyone… though that hasn’t stopped some on the internet.)
There are also a whole slew of Marvel Easter Eggs scattered around that will delight MCU fans: sadly, I suspect I am not enough of a Marvel nerd to pick up on them all.
Of the main cast, Emma Corrin (The young Princess Di of course in “The Crown”) has a lot of fun with the evil sorceress Cassandra and it’s certainly the first time that “flicking the bean” has been a line in a Marvel movie!
I know it doesn’t matter… but the story makes little sense
It comes as no surprise to me that this film has no less than FIVE different writers. It feels like a college frat party where different ideas have been thrown at the wall – a bit of multiverse here, a bit of “Logan” there – and then they’ve been bolted together into this thing. We end up at one point very much in “Furiosa” territory and I was only sorry that Anya Taylor-Joy didn’t make a cameo appearance! A finale scene apes the scene in “Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse” where hundreds of different Spideys from different multiverses hang-out. (I’m sure Wrexham fans will have appreciated the Welsh Deadpool).
It’s all a bit all over the place and I longed for the story to have been reined in just a tad and made more coherent.
Great one liners – shame some were inaudible
I’m not sure if this was the sound set-up in my cinema (I doubt it, since my Everyman cinema is normally top-notch) but the sound mixing seemed all over the place to me. So much so that some of Deadpool’s wisecracking comments to the camera were completely unintelligeable, drowned out by either background noise or the crashy bangy music by Rob Simonsen.
Monkeys?
Alongside the start of the end-titles there is a rather random assortment of outtakes from other Marvel films. But after the end titles, there is a proper monkey. And its a good one, worth waiting for.
Summary Thoughts on “Deadpool & Wolverine”
This is going to do very well at the box office this weekend and I think, like me, most audiences are going to have a blast. This is a good film to see on a Saturday night in a packed cinema: there will be collective laughs a plenty. However, I must admit that I’m a tad disappointed that it wasn’t overall a ‘better’ film. He might be saving cinemas this summer, but “Marvel Jesus” he is not.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “Deadpool & Wolverine”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73_1biulkYk .
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