Expected horrible, was OK instead.

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2018)

It's hard to follow a movie like Deadpool. The first movie wasn't a franchise film, it was clearly made with enthusiasm, and they had to fight the studio in order to make it. Deadpool 2 however is a big-budget sequel, a studio movie trying to follow the surprise success of the first one. The original director left the project, there were rumors of reshoots, and it felt like Deadpool 2 was becoming a parody of what the main character used to joke about.
Not quite. This sequel is very entertaining. It's uneven, not on par with the first one, but it doesn't feel as calculated and soulless as I thought it would be. I'm as grumpy and cynical as they come, and even I giggled here and there.
The main elements are there: Ryan Reynolds does his thing well, some jokes land, plenty of action, plenty of silliness and decent amount of blood too. There are some repeat gags from the first one, I don't know how I feel about them.
The main issue with Deadpool 2 is that it struggles to hold on to what it is, and it often comes off as pretentious, especially when it was fiddling with some more serious themes or trying to tug our heart-strings. I witnessed some absolutely horrible lines from Ryan Reynolds, talking to a child character, about how much he cares about him. It happened two times. It was not a joke. The movie was trying to sell me the idea that Deadpool would care about some annoying kid. It was played straight, and it was like some horrible soap opera. The writing and execution was just horribly off for a movie like this. If anything, these kind of scenes with cheap, tacky emotional manipulation - especially concerning child characters - are what Deadpool should joke about, because we've seen it so many times, and it's almost always horrible and dishonest. In these scenes, Deadpool became a soulless movie for test audiences and focus groups, nothing else.
Luckily, most of the time the movie works. It's not very smart, but it's coherent enough if you're willing to go along with the pace, and it's full of entertaining moments. Moments are what keeps this movie alive: it's never what the movie is focusing on, that alone will never do, but there are so many little touches here and there, in the foreground or in the background that kept me entertained.
It seems like there were plenty of reshoots, or then they just didn't know how to use money, because some of the CGI shots looked unfinished. The action itself was alright, not anything great like in John Wick (same director, or one of them) which is a damn shame, but at least serviceable and well enough shot/framed. I consider most action movies with a lot of CGI to have boring action, so take from that what you will.
To summarize, Deadpool 2, at times, feels like a mandatory focus-tested studio movie without much heart. The forced drama between Deadpool and the kid is absolutely horrible in how tone-deaf and pretentious it is, and the structure holds together just barely, but in the end it was a lot more enjoyable than it had any right to be. I cannot fathom how they'll do another one without the "series" really becoming a parody of what Deadpool should be parodying. If more sequels come, I really hope that there is more serious inspiration and drive from the creators' part, and less about trying to please every damn focus group in the universe. This time though, the experience was still positive.