I liked it, but I didn't love it

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2019)

Ryan Reynolds returns as Deadpool the fast-talking superhero whom with the help of his own pre-selected 'team' must work together to try to protect a mutant boy with supernatural abilities from Cable a time-travelling mutant from the future who has been sent back to destroy him.
I watched the first Deadpool film a couple of years ago and that film was like a breath of fresh air; the character of Deadpool was amazing and a lot of the dialogue was sharp, it was self-aware, very funny and broke the fourth wall like nothing I had seen before. It was kinetic and fast-paced and despite suffering from a thin plot it very rarely lost momentum and only occasionally suffered with dips in quality. This sequel brings some of the aforementioned qualities, but sadly there are more problems this time...
For a start, the plotting is a little messy here and some elements are either not explored or are not developed particularly well; I didn't really get much understanding of the kid's supernatural powers or how he acquired them? The headmaster tortures the kids if they are mutants and has a weird mankind vs mutantkind mantra which makes no sense and isn't explained. Josh Brolin is the cyborg that has been sent from the future to kill Russell Collins, but then the cyborg switches sides and decides to help X-Force in trying to stop Collins. What then follows is a rather messy finale with Reynolds giving a death-bed monologue which went on for far too long and stopped being funny after about the first 30 seconds... This section does let the film down slightly as there were many funny moments prior to this scene. I also felt the film had far too much emotional baggage which at times gave the film a heavy and maudlin feel which it really didn't warrant or need.
Despite some of the confounding and messy aspects of the plot Deadpool 2 still has fun and imagination; the opening credits were fun (with most of it being a homage or spoof to the James Bond film opening credits with one part seemingly being a Flashdance parody as well). The scene where X Force parachute out of the plane was also funny and there are some other subtle and clever references throughout the film that did have me laughing on a number of occasions - there is one scene where Wade lifts the floorboards up in the blind woman's house and he picks up a bag of Wade's cocaine, but if you look closely there is another item under the floorboards that says 'A Cure For Blindness' which is a subtle, but funny visual piece of humour.
Deadpool 2 is far from perfect and did not have me laughing as loudly or as often as the first film, but it is still amusing and has plenty of moments that do work. Some strong characters from the first film were underused here such as Negasonic and Colossus which is a shame as they provided great support to Deadpool in the first film. It's worth watching, but it doesn't quite reach the brilliance that was attained in the first film.