For years I have railed against bloated action movies with incessant destruction, annoying characters and gratuitous violence, especially if the tone is that the violence is comic, unreal or unimportant.  Deadpool 2 is such a movie.  Most of the time it is annoying rather than clever, cringe-worthy at many moments, despicable in terms of valuing human life, and not particularly funny.  I hated it.  And yet, I must admit that it has merits that warrant a couple of stars.

David Leitch’s film is precisely the irreverent, profane, absurd superhero fantasy that I was expecting.  I didn’t like the first film, so I was prepared.  Yet I hated this one even more.  Still, something about it kept working at my subconscious, and it involves Cable (Josh Brolin).  Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) automatically assumes that Cable, the cyborg from the future who is trying to kill young Russell (Julian Dennison) must be stopped — as if Cable were the Terminator and Russell is Sarah Connor.  But I kept wondering, maybe Cable has a good reason for hunting the boy.  And once the movie gets to that unexpected revelation, it gets better.

The other area of merit involves Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Deadpool’s love interest.  She is key at the beginning of the story, then reappears at the end.  And when they reunite at the end, the film becomes genuinely touching, its most human.  It was almost worth waiting through all the mindless destruction and little penis jokes to get to that wonderfully tender reunion.  As the movie eventually states, it’s all about family, the f-word that brings us together instead of driving us apart.

Deadpool and its ilk are not for me, especially when their view of the world is nihilistic, ultra-violent, narcissistic claptrap.  But it’s also nice to know that if you wade through such cinematic cesspools occasionally you can find an oasis of quality, like the reunion scene, or can at least enjoy the corny friendship themes between the surviving superheroes that promise (at least in that universe) a better future for us all.  ☆ ☆.  27 June 2018.