Deadpool & Wolverine, 6/10
The long-awaited return of both Deadpool and Wolverine (can you believe it's been 6 years since Deadpool 2?), the title is pretty much what you get. Deadpool and Wolverine both enter the MCU by getting roped into an appropriately nonsensical adventure featuring alternate universes and saving the world, with a generous slathering of the Deadpool movie style. If you've seen the previous entries then you know what to expect, there's no surprises on that front: tons (and I mean tons) of swearing, blood, violence, fourth wall breaking and incredibly juvenile and crass humor. If you enjoyed the previous movies, then you'll enjoy this, and vice versa. Deadpool seems to do best when he's paired up with a grumpy straight man to bounce off of (see Cable in Deadpool 2), and the double act Reynolds and Jackman are doing is very entertaining, they have great chemistry together. The line of the movie was the call back to the actual first good Marvel movie IIRC (to avoid spoilers).
As far as my enjoyment goes, this was pretty much in line with the previous two. It's light, fluffy, entertaining, with some new more enjoyable aspects and some less so. The meta stuff is even more in focus this time, which I really enjoyed, and can't really talk about without spoiling a ton of the surprises. Jackman's Wolverine is more like Logan than X-Men 2 in this (ie. jaded old man instead of a hotheaded tough guy), and he lends the role the appropriate gravitas to contrast with Deadpool's irreverent nature. There's a lot of action and it's really fun, you're definitely getting your money's worth on the "Wolverine vs Deadpool" front. The humor was quite hit or miss for me: there were tons of hilarious gags (especially in the beginning, and you'll know exactly what I mean when you go see it), but they were balanced out by an almost equal amount of mostly unfunny or downright cringeworthy, improv-feeling dialogue that seemed to mostly rely on sweary shock value. Speaking of, the swearing definitely went overboard and into gratuitousness. You can only hear Wolverine tell Wade to shut the fuck up before it starts to sound like it was written by a 12-year old trying to be edgy.
I don't think it's a huge spoiler that a movie about Deadpool entering the Marvel multiverse is a total cameo-fest, and those were some of the most fun parts. They dig pretty deep into the history of the whole modern superhero genre for some surprisingly satisfying parts for some long forgotten characters. There are some hilarious easter eggs and lines in there and it's done in a fun way that makes the film feel like a wholesome celebration of the superhero genre.
As much as I enjoyed this movie going even deeper into the meta stuff, I still feel like we haven't truly seen a movie that would fully encapsulate the anarchic, world-breaking nature of Deadpool's self-awareness. I started thinking that a Deadpool movie that would be a mockumentary about the making of a Deadpool movie would be a concept truly worthy of the character. I'm talking gags like deliberate continuity errors, Deadpool editing the movie in real time, rewriting the script as the movie's playing out, stepping out of the bounds of the frame etc. But that would require a more sophisticated approach than Reynolds' version, which seems to be content focusing on the "merc with a mouth" aspect of the character, rather than "comic book character who knows he's in a comic book" element. If anything, Deadpool & Wolverine, for all its entertainment value, is still indicative of the limitations of the modern superhero film: too big of a budget, the seeming need to have big effects blowouts etc. A more subversive, lower budget approach would IMO suit the character much better.
