Deadpool & Wolverine: Messy, 'Unadulterated Fun'

Six years after the events of Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson is living a quiet life when he learns that life might end. Threatened by the Time Variance Authority, which controls alternate realities and timelines, Wilson's Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) sets out to save the world and resurrect Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to help him. But Shawn Levy's Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel's first R-rated movie, with an 80% critics score and 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, does more than revive a beloved character. Here's what critics are saying:

• It's "the ultimate love letter to Marvel fans"—"pure, unadulterated fun," writes Dominic Baez at the Seattle Times. With its "brilliant" cameos and able handling of Wolverine's resurrection, it serves to raise the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise out of its "lowest point." Indeed, "Marvel has once again caught lightning in a bottle, delivering a cinematic experience on par with the very best in the MCU."
• "Deadpool & Wolverine brings scads of satisfying spectacle and welcome surprises to the big screen, along with a gleeful barrage of cameos, an avalanche of action, and a slew of R-rated jokes and f-bombs," writes Kristy Puchko at Mashable. "Reynolds is as comfortable as ever in the snug-fitting supersuit of his wise-cracking antihero." But "Jackman steadily runs away with this movie—sometimes on all fours!"

• There are many "very funny" jokes about Disney's merging of Marvel and 20th Century Fox, which owned the rights to Deadpool and Wolverine prior to 2019. But they're "pretty much all the movie has to offer," writes Kyle Smith at the Wall Street Journal, noting "disconcertingly long stretches" are devoted to explaining the mechanisms behind the "thicket" of a plot so that the script "at times seems like an operating manual for heavy machinery."
• "Scattershot to the extreme," with a story "so inconsequential that the climax figuratively smiles and shrugs," the film "would grate on the nerves if not for Reynolds' infectious enthusiasm and contentious rapport with Jackman," writes Nick Schager at the Daily Beast. "Deadpool & Wolverine eventually proves less than the sum of its parts—a collection of unexpected and comical gags strung together by a haphazard plot," he adds. "Still, it's more amusing and electric—more alive—than any MCU installment in years."

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