There’s good news and bad news, folks. Ryan Reynolds, who rewrote the history books with the world’s first superhero mockumentary in 2016’s Deadpool, is in good form. The problem though, is repetition. How long before you stop reacting to his wink/nudges, as he looks at the camera after foreshadowing what comes in the next scene?
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Deadpool 2 is enjoyable for the most part. The film is consistently funny, it has a barrage of pop-culture references that never stop, and decently choreographed VFX fight scenes (including the ones in slow-motion). And yet, there are several moments where you can sense the overkill.
Deadpool 2 barely meets the requirements for a paisa vasool film, without ever becoming a 2.0 version of its 2016 self.
The people behind this sequel are a fairly intelligent bunch and it’s visible at various points in the film. But the time spent on mining humour out of EACH AND EVERY scene, could have somehow been divested towards writing a more wholesome, entertaining story.
The fourth wall breaking, Reynolds slaying it with his Twitter wit, Celine Dion and Enya’s angelic vocals appearing during slo-mo action sequences – everything about Deadpool 2 feels like a pale imitation of the fantastic first film. From Reynolds’s own outing as Green Lantern to imitating David Beckham’s squeaky voice – nothing was off limits during the making of the original. With Deadpool 2, it’s much more of the same. But each time a joke comes on in the sequel, they seem to oozing #OMGSoIrreverent and #SelfAwareAF.
Deadpool 2 takes off where the first film ends – Wade Wilson is established as the foul-mouthed superhero taking on mafia bosses all around the world. The makers probably realised that the film needed a few emotional stakes so that it wouldn’t look like a 2-hour comedy sketch. And the way they go about it (by killing a character and showing them in flashes) is just lazy writing.
The fun part about the original Deadpool is how he IS the one-man army, something Tiger Shroff is desperately trying to stake his claim to. A sanitised version of Deadpool finding a purpose larger than himself, leading a team, embracing the F-word (Family) – it’s subversive to a point and then it’s not. By the end, Deadpool 2 is thriving on the very tropes it began mocking. “Isn’t it a little derivative?”, a character asks, and the audience groans at the film’s umpteenth self-aware punchline.
Ryan Reynolds is his usual affable self, however the self-deprecation and the Canada jokes do become too much. After a blockbuster motion-capture performance as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, Josh Brolin has little to do as Cable apart from looking intimidating. The ‘Winter Soldier arm’, the Terminator-like left eye with a red dot of light, the formidable physicality – Cable looks like a daunting antagonist… and nothing else. He’s given a sadly formulaic backstory, that provokes nothing. The only inventive original writing in Deadpool 2, is the incorporation of the character ‘Domino’ – whose superpower (being lucky) is weaved beautifully into a truck-convoy sequence.
Deadpool 2 is not a bad film – it has some jaw-dropping cameos by A-listers and the single greatest Basic Instinct joke. But it never quite propels things to the next level, like the film’s inventive/exhausting PR campaigns would have you believe. The ‘Deadpool formula’ has to be done away with, and Ryan Reynolds’ superhero alter-ego needs some intervention. Compared to that fearlessly subversive first film, Deadpool 2 looks like a safe, studio-pressed product. Some might say this gifted team is destined for films greater than this sequel.
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