Dead­pool & Wolver­ine review – a mixed (ball) bag

I’d like to see a new cut of this film excised of all the footage of Dead­pool and any­thing Dead­pool adja­cent. It’s just Hugh Jackman’s sad­sack Wolver­ine giv­en space to tum­ble into a booze-soaked exis­ten­tial freefall with­out Grou­cho Snarx yam­mer­ing away about BJs and bean-flick­ing in the back­ground. All of which is to say, Shawn Levy’s Dead­pool & Wolver­ine is a mixed (ball) bag indeed, def­i­nite­ly not unen­durable, and even boast­ing a cou­ple of nuggets of misty-eyed nos­tal­gia that aren’t instant­ly under­cut by play­ground irony, but for the most part it does boast the hit-and-miss qual­i­ties of poly­tech­nic sketch comedy.

The set-up is intrigu­ing: a cor­po­rate nabob known as Para­dox (Matthew Mac­Fadyen) has been giv­en the task of tidy­ing up all the dan­gling and dead-end time­lines in the entire MCU, essen­tial­ly scoop­ing up the odds and sods of super­herodom and coerc­ing them into wrap­ping things up before he posts them to an arid nether­world known as The Void. While in The Void, these dis­card­ed souls come under the pow­er of Emma Corrin’s Cas­san­dra Nova, tele­path­ic twin of Charles Xavier and hap­py to be tool­ing about and caus­ing the good guys a lot of pain by mas­sag­ing their inter­nal organs.

We hook up with Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wil­son at the point where he’s thrown in the tow­el of his Dead­pool gig and ready to embrace nor­mal­cy. Yet when he’s kid­napped by Para­dox and told of this indus­tri­al-scale clean­ing oper­a­tion, he flits through a por­tal and solic­its the help of Jackman’s Wolver­ine from a time­line in which he is wal­low­ing into his whiskey glass hav­ing made a life-alter­ing error of judgement.

The dye, then, is cast for a Mid­night Run à la MCU, with the wise­crack­er and the ragea­holic smooshed togeth­er into the con­fines of a Hon­da Odyssey all ready to tra­verse The Void and save their time­line from oblit­er­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s very lit­tle chem­istry between the two leads. Their aes­thet­ic, their per­for­mance styles, their visions of what this film is, appear to be very dif­fer­ent indeed. They share so much screen­time togeth­er, but nev­er once prop­er­ly gel.

Of all the Mar­vel sub-fran­chis­es, it’s prob­a­bly Dead­pool that pro­vokes the most extreme reac­tions on both sides of the aisle, and it’s easy to see why. As a char­ac­ter, there’s always been the sense of a cor­po­rate-spon­sored rebel, say­ing just enough to get him put on the naughty step, but not quite enough for a full, dis­hon­ourable expulsion.

Even the hard­core haters would like­ly have to give some ele­ments of this three­quel their dues, as the script goes all-in on the meta­tex­tu­al behind-the-scenes deal­ings relat­ing to the dec­i­ma­tion of 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox and its var­i­ous IP hold­ings. Some of Reynolds’ to-cam­era asides sound like they were ripped direct­ly from a Vari­ety edi­to­r­i­al. Yet despite all the inside base­ball fun­nin’, no-one’s real­ly get­ting hurt at the end of the day.

The best ele­ments of the film are the things we can’t real­ly talk about, but all I will say is that the film thank­ful­ly dials back the design­er cyn­i­cism when it comes to the ques­tion of how to deal with all those super­heroes whose sto­ries were lost by the way­side. It’s a move that’s been attempt­ed by count­less super­hero film­mak­ers attempt­ing to chase the nos­tal­gia cir­cuit rain­bow, but this is the one time where it actu­al­ly clicks and doesn’t feel like a dis­mal embar­rass­ment for all involved. And with­out recourse to AI!

But, y’know, this is anoth­er Dead­pool film and offers no sur­pris­es when it comes to the tone. When you’re watch­ing an art­work that’s active­ly attempt­ing to out-egre­gious a Kings­man sequel, then you know you’re on a hid­ing to noth­ing. And while it occa­sion­al­ly feels quite rev­o­lu­tion­ary when it’s direct­ly dis­cussing the dra­mat­ic cul-de-sac that is the ​“mul­ti­verse”, it then goes on to drink hearti­ly from that well with dimin­ish­ing results that we know it is aware of.

Some of the jokes land through sheer vol­ume and force of will, but it feels like you have to endure 40-or-so rec­tal stab­bings for a sin­gle juicy zinger. And I would nev­er usu­al­ly endorse this, but it’s worth sit­ting for the cred­its of this one, as there’s an earnest­ly charm­ing paean to the pas­sion behind the peo­ple who make these films – even the shit ones.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.