I was really looking forward to this movie based upon the fun I had with Deadpool 1. But I was disappointed to the extent that I found myself yawning at least a couple of times and laughing very little. My negative reaction goes very much against the grain in that it got high critics’ reviews ( 84% on Rotten Tomatoes) and mosyly praise from theater goers. My review is heavily based upon a review by  Alex Doenau of Trespass Magazine which I found expressed my sentiments almost exactly and to whom I give credit.

 DEADPOOL   2.7***

       You think you’re doing something different, and you make 15 times your budget back. Success! So you bring back your star, give him a writing credit and you think you’re getting more of the same, for only a little bit more money. That’s the theory behind Deadpool 2. Little did they know that they were essentially getting another X-Men movie, but with swearing and gore.  

Immortal mutant Wade “Deadpool” Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) takes a break from killing bad guys internationally so that he can protect an angry young pyrotechnical mutant Russell  from the wrath of time-traveling assassin Cable (Josh Brolin, Avengers).

The whole thing about Deadpool is that he’s supposed to be irreverent and rude. Deadpool 2 sees him plunged into a deep depression almost from the very start, and the way the writers, including  Reynolds, have fashioned the character means that he doesn’t really have the capacity for drama. Deadpool is designed to be annoying to his enemies, but he becomes irritating to the audience as well.   Fourth wall-breaking (speaking directly to the camera/audience) for the sake of it helps no one, and it does not cloak the fact that this movie is  about helping a misfit mutant to feel like he belongs in a world that has been cruel and tortuous to him; in other words, the themes that have defined 18 years of X-Men films. 

 Deadpool 2 is strangely charmless, as if they thought they’d worked hard enough in the first, so that henceforth they only needed to be cruel, trot out some of the same jokes and struggle for relevance. While it is true there’s more than one way to be funny, Deadpool 2 is not particularly so. The worst crime, however, is the inability of Deadpool 2 to strike a tone, or balance pathos with comedy. It is a movie that cancels itself out..

    Deadpool 2 is everything that it is supposed to rail against: a generic comic book movie that is only a step above the lesser entries in the Marvel/Fox continuum. The best scenes come after many will have already left the cinema — not having been trained to stay for the credits  and these credits make you wonder why the rest of the movie wasn’t much better. Deadpool 2 is vulgar enough to entertain less-demanding audiences, but the discerning viewer knows from experience that you can incorporate these elements into an overall stronger film. Perhaps  Deadpool 2 is merely the difficult second album; but to me whatever good will Reynolds had built up in Deadpool 1 is quickly squandered here.