The sequel to the widely successful 2016 original Deadpool and the eleventh installment in the X-Men movie franchise first released in 2000, Deadpool 2 is a very unconventional comic book superhero movie that is filled to the brim with self-referential and irreverent humor and is brought to life by the charismatic performance of Ryan Reynolds. Taking place several years after the first film, Deadpool whose real name is Wade Wilson, played by the hilarious Ryan Reynolds, suffers a personal tragedy at the beginning and is in a very low place. After an attempted suicide, his superhero friend Colossus helps to bring him back to life and takes him to the X-Men mansion to recover. Eventually, he confronts a time-traveling cybernetic solider named Cable, played by Oscar nominee Josh Brolin, who wants to kill the young mutant Firefist whose real name is Russell Collins, played by the terrific young actor Julian Dennison who is best known for his outstanding role in 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Deadpool decides to protect the seemingly innocent Collins from Cable whose intentions are at first mysterious to the audience. In one of many references to X-Men, Deadpool forms the team X-Force in which several of the members suffer ridiculously bad luck, and he uses them to prevent a deadly clash between Collins and Cable. Although it sounds like a rather straightforward comic book story, the film takes a much less serious approach with Deadpool constantly making fun of X-Men and Marvel Comics in quite hilarious and silly ways and often breaking the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience. A majority of the humor is comprised of inside jokes in which the audience really needs to be somewhat familiar with superhero characters and the previous comic book movies. There are also even references to Barbra Streisand movies as well as other rather cheesy elements of pop culture. Finally, it is very much an R-rated experience as a result of the gratuitous amount of violence and gore and the overabundance of vulgar comedy. Overall, I found it be an extremely entertaining movie as good as the original because of its creative and zany antics and dazzling array of meta humor; however, it is definitely not for all tastes as a result of its lewdness.
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