Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B-

I’m so sick of the fucking multiverse.

Deadpool & Wolverine takes a moment to acknowledge that it knows this about me—and, presumably, a whole lot of other viewers. The problem is not only that the moment comes far too late in the film, but after spending a majority of the film leaning on the Marvel “multiverse” as a critical element of its premise, its setting, and the driver of its incredibly convoluted and frankly stupid plot.

It’s always a convenient device, isn’t it? Well, less and less so as the years of is use drag on. I don’t think any Marvel movie has used “the multiverse” in a particularly clever or certainly original way, aside from the exceptional Spider-verse movies. Marvel runs out of ideas for specific characters, and then recycles them using the same characters in “alternate universes.”

With Deadpool & Wolverine, we get a “threequel” in the Deadpool franchise, and a resurrected Wolverine as a follow-up to the relatively uncompromised vision that was Logan (2017), one of the best superhero films of the 21st century. Not that that’s a particularly high bar. I wish I could say it’s a delight to see the return of Dafne Keen as Laura, except that she’s utterly wasted in this movie, given nothing of real consequence to do onscreen. The same can be said of the plethora of cameos by other actors who were once big stars in franchises of their own, now showing up to take part in CGI-laden battle sequences that barely have visual comprehensibility.

I can say this for Deadpool movies: at least they’re consistent. Every one of these movies is of B-minus quality, but I cannot deny they make me laugh. Deadpool & Wolverine has a lot of very funny gags, delivered by actors with very good comic timing. These are the things that elevate a movie that would otherwise just be garbage.

When the movie starts, before the opening credits, this film rather pointedy acknowledges how very dead Wolverine is. Well, that Wolverine, anyway. Almost immediately. director Shawn Levy, along with writers that include Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds himself, introduce the “Time Variance Authority” previously introduced by the Disney+/Marvel series Loki, which had a first season that was surprisingly fun and a second season that was relatively lame. One wonders how many viewers of this movie now have seen Loki and have the kind of working knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has been expected of viewers for so long that a good majority of them are now utterly over it. In any event, you can pretty easily imagine how we get Wolverine back into a feature film as played by Hugh Jackman—for the ninth time. The man was 32 the first time he played this character. He’s 55 now, and among Deadpool’s endless meta gags in this movie, he quips that Jackman will be playing this character until he’s 90. It feels as though that may actually happen.

The thing is, I’m not nearly as sick of Wolverine as I am of the multiverse, because Jackman has an unstoppable onscreen charisma, and a genuine chemistry with Ryan Reynolds. And I won’t deny my delight in how much more Deadpool leans into a winking queerness with every film, this time constantly leering and lusting after how hot Wolverine (or, as the case may be, Hugh Jackman) is. Most of the time, Deadpool, in all its iterations, is dumb but fun.

Still, I wish they had come up with a better story idea. What we get here as a story arc is frankly lame, only partly saved by the rapid-fire comic delivery. As is often the case, though, Deadpool & Wolverine suffers from an uninspired villain, here played by Emma Corrin as a cross between Lex Luthor and Sinéad O’connor. Corrin was fantastic as Princess Diana in The Crown, so they’re clearly a gifted actor—yet another just wasted on this movie.

Ultimately, Deadpool & Wolverine boils down to a skilled delivery of an uninspired project packed with countless uninspired supporting characters. In the climactic sequence, it steals a conceit straight from Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse, then amplifies it, and “playfully” vulgarizes it. That is, of course, what the Deadpool movies have been doing all along: throwing out all the bloody violence and profanity it can just because it’s an R-rated superhero movie. This time around, characters say “fuck” so often it starts to sound forced, almost compulsive, as though being uttered for no other reason than to increase the count of its usage. There comes a point where that just gets boring.

I’ll never understand why studios think giving every single one of these identical story beats is a good idea. Foul language and giddy dismemberment does not alone make a movie stand apart; it has to have a uniquely compelling story, and on that front, this movie is utterly lacking. in the end devolving into the same climactic, mediocre special effects bullshit as countless others before it. If this movie has any saving grace, it’s the two leads. If you focus on their delivery and stay “in the moment” at all times without regard to wherever (or whenever) the hell the “sacred timeline” movie is going, you’ll have a relatively good time.

*Just because he’s delighting fans by wearing a yellow suit doesn’t mean we haven’t seen this before.*

Overall: B-