Technical assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 2.5
CINEMA rating: V18
MTRCB rating: R16
The guy who played Thanos in The Avengers is back, but this time, he’s not Thanos but grief-stricken Cable (Josh Brolin) who returns from the future to exterminate young Russel (Julian Dennison). The boy it turns out is to become the ruthless Firefist who will kill Cable’s family and many others. But mercenary assassin turned superhero with a foul-mouth and sick humor Wade aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) saves the boy. He assembles X-Force, with Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), Domino (Zazie Beetz), and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) to stop Russel from becoming the annihilator.
Deadpool 2 gathers several Marvel superheroes, including the X-Men, with Wade pejoratively referred to as an X-Men trainee. He flunks the training of course, because he defies discipline. And with
his penchant for “breaking the fourth wall”, Wade again talks directly to the audience as he lampoons Marvel and DC superheroes, and even Disney. He ridicules Frozen, Yentl, RoboCop, Avengers, X-Men and many more. People who are not familiar with these movies may get lost and find the plot nonsensical. Wade basks in his craziness and the rest patiently allows him to do so. What aids it all is good timing. Ryan Reynolds as Wade is crass with the stoic Colossus who by the way is CGI, but on screen together, they elicit so much laughter. The tempo is as eccentrically unpredictable as the
twisted humor of the movie. Russel’s hands look genuinely on fire and burning
like steel. The Juggernaut is a bit grotesque, it looks like a cracked steel egg that is more hilarious than foreboding. The fight scenes, albeit computer generated, are interspersed with
Wade’s sick humor that they are not at all boring. And the soundtrack is as absurdly appropriate.
The movie is so entertaining (not extraordinary but definitely not the usual
run-of-the-mill fantasy comedy) that it saddens us that we can’t recommend it for kids. There’s excessive use of cuss words, sexual innuendoes, decapitation, and everything violent. The bizarre comedy has become so delectable that we feel there are not enough cues to help young audiences decipher the movie’s key
message. And that message, buried deep under a multitude of dissonance, is actually beautiful and sublime: there’s a good side to every person. Evil is not genetic, it is not a
malignant deformity that we are born with. Sure, some have a predisposition to violence and mad temper. But such behavior doesn’t automatically make us mass murderers and annihilators. Wade’s life is a testament to that: he is a rogue assassin and mercenary turned superhero. Good news is, we as humans can help curb the bad in our neighbor, and help cultivate the good in them. Like salt of the earth. (ME)
PS: CINEMA notes one subtle message so important it opens and closes Deadpool 2: we need family, we need to belong. Family (or the tragic loss of it) serves as motivation for the story arc: as Wade’s fiancée Vanessa gives up her IUD (intra uterine device) as a gift to Wade, the pair decide to start a family but Vanessa is killed in an attack; Cable is out to hunt down his family’s murderer; the orphans, deprived of family, are exploited in the mutant re-education center where Domino, herself orphaned, was raised; 14-year-old Russell, who almost becomes a killer, cannot trust anybody as his surrogate family in the orphanage abuses him. In the end, Wade himself says it loud and clear: we need family, we need to belong.
PS: CINEMA notes one subtle message so important it opens and closes Deadpool 2: we need family, we need to belong. Family (or the tragic loss of it) serves as motivation for the story arc: as Wade’s fiancée Vanessa gives up her IUD (intra uterine device) as a gift to Wade, the pair decide to start a family but Vanessa is killed in an attack; Cable is out to hunt down his family’s murderer; the orphans, deprived of family, are exploited in the mutant re-education center where Domino, herself orphaned, was raised; 14-year-old Russell, who almost becomes a killer, cannot trust anybody as his surrogate family in the orphanage abuses him. In the end, Wade himself says it loud and clear: we need family, we need to belong.
