The slow death of R

Rating: 7/10 (9 August 2018)

Deadpool 2 is fun. Ryan Reynolds is fun. There are jokes aplenty. There is a lot of nice CGI, too. What the movie lacked was a story. I mean, stuff happens, but not for any particular reason other than comic relief. Yet you have to have something to be relieved from, first. And it's not like the ideas didn't have potential: a hero losing his will to live, a bunch of other superheros from which Domino has the superpower of luck, the origin story of a hero or a supervillain, depending on the choices of the characters in the movie, time travel, Cable, Juggernaut... Yukio? Anyway, none of these ideas get developed after a quick exposition. Domino is pretty cool, but her superpower is just ... too super. Cable was cool, but as a character he is pretty much, just like Juggernaut, another version of the straight face man, just another Colossus.
And yes, Brad Pitt is the Vanisher and Matt Damon is a redneck and there are probably other cameos of note, and yes, there are a lot of sex jokes and foul mouthed dialogue, but the violence is now more subdued, with less blood, less gore, less pain, less impact. There is no substitute for the sex scene with Morena Baccarin from the first movie and the only nudity that counts is probably Jugernaut's ass. So while the movie starts with swearing at Wolverine for doing a hard R Logan, the rest of the film is mild. Rather than a competition for Logan, Deadpool 2 is more a counterpart for Tucker and Dale vs Evil.
Bottom line: mindless fun. I kind of liked the first one better because there was a better story and way better characterization.