Did you like the first Deadpool? Its constant allegedly clever meta-references? The look-how-edgy-this-is shock humor? The graphic violence? Deadpool 2 has more of those things, so you will enjoy this one too. Although, this time, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is depressed for various spoilery reasons and wants to die, just like Wolverine, only he can’t, just like Wolverine. So, again, just like Wolverine (he’s sort of obsessed with Wolverine), he throws himself into good deeds as a form of therapy and attempted absolution. In this case it’s saving a powerful, troubled young mutant from time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin), who insists the kid will grow up to be some sort of future menace.
Two hours of the little kid inside you that laughed hysterically because a robot in some stupid movie your parents took you to said “ass” and gave someone the finger.
That’s it. There’s only the thinnest thread of narrative to carry Deadpool 2 from joke to action sequence to joke, which is fine because that means you’ll spend less time worrying about how it fits into some large nebulous cinematic universe. The jokes are near-constant, endless pop culture references or good-natured shocks, like a bit where an invisible man gets electrocuted and it turns out he was played by a famous celebrity. And the violence is often playfully gruesome, like when a guy is chopped up in a giant wood chipper and then pukes acid on a person trying to save him.
Deadpool 2 is not up to anything subtle or subversive. There’s no subtext and nothing to decode. Nobody will write a thinkpiece calling it “the movie we need right now.” It’s obnoxious and stupid, — but gleefully so, and you will not have to hear that it’s secretly about Donald Trump. It’s two hours of the little kid inside you that laughed hysterically because a robot in some stupid movie your parents took you to said “ass” and gave someone the finger.
