Somehow even more foul-mouthed and in-jokey than I’d expected, though by-and-large I don’t think it hurts the movie or its narrative? Not that I could actually tell, of course, steeped as I am in this stuff — when my mom asked why so-and-so was in this movie (filling in that blank would probably constitute a spoiler), I immediately had the answer, one that your average filmgoer, EHH, probably wouldn’t have. Though sometimes the profanity does get a LITTLE hat-on-a-hat.
Anyway, yes, let’s try the spoiler-lite version of the plot: Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has given up on the hero/merc gig, no longer romping around in the red suit and is instead wearing a toupee and selling cars with his pal from the 2nd movie, Dennis (Rob Delaney). But soon fortune smiles on ol’ Wade, sort of, when he is whisked away to the TVA — again, I *think* the movie imparts enough knowledge of how this works without watching the Disney+ LOKI show, but how the hell would I know for sure? — by agents under the command of Paradox (the extremely smarmy Matthew Macfadyen) and a choice is offered. With the life he’s been reminded he still loves, even if it hasn’t gone the way he wanted, threatened, Deadpool hops across time streams and grabs the first multiversal Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, in his TENTH live action appearance as the Canadian berserker) he can honestly get his hands on in order to try and prevent, let’s say, a great undoing.
It is, in the end, a lot like the previous Deadpool movies: some great action, lots and lots of bawdy wisecracks, but also — and forever god bless the writer of Deadpool’s first solo ongoing series, Joe Kelly, for injecting this into Wade Wilson’s DNA — some real weight and pathos when it gets right down to it. Some of that also comes from this particular version of Logan’s history that you may have seen in the trailers — and some of it from the history of the “proper” Logan we all saw in theaters, geez, seven years ago. I will say, I do have to agree that it does sag a little in the middle, and there may be one Wade-and-Logan hate-off fight too many — or maybe at least one of them runs a few minutes too long, one or the other. But it ends well, and at least to me, serves as a grand reminder why these two actors are beloved as these title characters — Wade Wilson remains the perfect outlet for Reynolds’s non-stop chatterbox energy and, god, the older Jackman gets the better he inhabits Logan’s weary ferocity. I am absolutely seeing this at least one more time this weekend, I’m sure.
(God, I wish I could get into spoilers — there’s a few things they do here that had me grinning, hooting, and hollering — but I’m sure a couple of you would kill me.)