Deadpool 2 leavens the hit-making Marvel mix of fight scenes, flashbacks and explosions with dick jokes. Protagonist Wade (the ultra-bro, Ryan Reynolds) was a mercenary. He was left with a complexion like a Costco cheese pizza after a forcible gene-scrambling experiment intended to cure his stage-4 cancer. Now he’s the killer Deadpool: Hooded, cross-sworded, armed and ludicrous.
Deadpool’s frenemy here is Cable (Josh Brolin), so thoroughly ripped from The Terminator that Deadpool even calls him “John Connor.” The highlight is a Vancouver super-truck rampage with Deadpool at the wheel, upside down and ass-forward. He’s helped by the movie’s standout Zazie Beetz as Domino, who has a new kind of superpower—supernatural luck: Nothing ever falls on her head, even when it’s raining automobiles.
One loved the parody of the Skyfall titles, Julian Dennison of Hunt for the Wilderpeople as a kid mutant who may turn killer, the oil portrait of Karl Marx on the walls of the Xavier Mansion and the longest demise since Bugs Bunny staged one for Elmer. It’s not as overfilling as the first Deadpool, and from a nerd standpoint it had a little more respect for the chrome giant Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) than its predecessor.
The downside is that Morena Baccarin, who gave the first Deadpool a strong romantic twist, is mushy here. She wants to be a mom and spends her time in the movie in a sort of heavenly purdah. When she says, “The baby factory is open for business,” the line goes beyond cute and into the realm of something written by someone a little unsure of how babies are made. (Me, I know how. I just don’t know why.)
