REVIEW: ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Is As Lazy As Blockbusters Get

The Deadpool franchise has always poked fun at the superhero genre—and the cinematic universes and Hollywood studios at the centre of it— from an arms-length distance. Its farcical, meta nature hopes to serve as a respite from the self-serious doomsday scenarios that have come to define the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all the while adhering to the same blockbuster structure. Yet, with Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine, none of its self-congratulatory wisecracks can rescue an experience that feels more insecure and uninspired than the movies it’s ridiculing.

Deadpool & Wolverine manifests as streamlined fan service. It constantly dangles a set of fourth-wall references in front of the audience, hoping its direct callbacks to 20th-Century Fox and other MCU titles will distract from how it does everything worse than them. The film overcompensates at each turn, giving us a series of jokes that never know when to end and an array of overused pop-music stings. For a movie that intends to be a wild card in the MCU, its identity is constructed from the worst parts of the movies it ceaselessly references. At its best, Deadpool & Wolverine is a raunchy, R-rated comedy that a pre-teen audience would find edgy, and they can’t even see it without chaperones.

Having retired the Deadpool mantle after the events the previous film, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is called back into the fray by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a secret organization that monitors the safety of Earth’s various timelines. With his own universe facing complete destruction, Wilson journeys to find an alternate-universe Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to save his reality.

At its core, Deadpool & Wolverine is an adult comedy, but it’s all punchline and zero setup. The film is an amalgamation of endless catchphrases, meta-references, and random quips that barely tie together. It’s as if the script, co-penned by Levy and Reynolds, is so terrified of a few jokes falling flat, it decides to tell thirty at once to compensate.

The effect is numbing and grating, rarely giving audiences the time to appreciate, let alone understand, its attempts at humour. Deadpool & Wolverine often feels iterative of a poorly thought-out SNL sketch, full of moments where characters simply stand and talk as the camera lazily bounces around them. A dizzying number of classic superhero cameos only serve to intensify the film’s bloat.

One of the movie’s foremost gags centres around the drop in the MCU’s quality after Avengers: Endgame. Yet, Deadpool & Wolverine unfolds as another product of that trend, subsisting off moments that lampoon Disney’s safe brand of storytelling but never overcome it. Levy and company seem to want brownie points for calling out the MCU’s missteps while actively engaging in them. It’s the hallmark of a film that believes itself to be daring and unique but goes for the lowest-hanging fruit when it’s available.

It’s a quality that quickly infects the action spectacle. Deadpool & Wolverine wastes no time in building up the long-awaited tussle between its titular heroes, but each encounter is drowned out by pop music that renders them inconsequential. It reeks of a film that’s afraid to let its characters and action take control.

Its more inventive kills and fisticuffs are muted by a soundtrack that feels collated by a marketing team that only listens to top-100 radio. From NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” to “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News to Green Day’s “Good Riddance,” Deadpool & Wolverine only makes use of what is easily recognizable—making its repeated jabs at Disney’s kid-friendly formula ring hollow.

As the film’s meta-ambitions take a back seat to its narrative, its attempts at emotional catharsis become more laughable than its attempts at humour. There’s very little to get excited about in a film that makes fun of multi-verses with its own tired take on it, only serving to waste a great, sincere Hugh Jackman performance with each recycled plot beat.

Deadpool & Wolverine would be easy to forgive if it wasn’t so self-applauding. It takes on the superhero movie, the MCU’s recent downturn, and Disney itself with its own listless rendition of the formula. It believes itself to be a cutting-edge, silly, and risqué addition to the Marvel canon when it’s really one of its most dull. Deadpool & Wolverine unfolds as meta-fan service; instead of clever nods to Marvel’s past, it speaks directly to the viewer, offering little more than obvious, stated references. It’s about as lazy as a blockbuster can get.

Deadpool & Wolverine releases in theatres everywhere on July 26th.