Movie Review: Deadpool 2

Jeff D Lowe5/18/2018 2:30 PM

Okay, here we go! Our first review blog (NO SPOILERS EVER). Usually, these will be short (1-3 paragraphs per person), but we just want to run through a few things with how these review blogs will work.

– We want your rating for every movie we see (voting link is below)
– We won’t review every movie on here, but we will review most of them
– We do not just do comic book and Star Wars movies (though, this is a bad example, ha)
– The plan is for me to review everything I see on YouTube (coming soon)
– Everyone and anyone at Barstool who wants to rate/review a movie can do so
— We aren’t here to monopolize reviews, we want a great resource for movie fans
— Basically, we want to give you variety with differing movie opinions, ratings and takes
– We all won’t always agree, and that’s fine (unless you tell me ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ is bad)
– I will explain our rating system at the bottom of this blog

Lights, Camera, Barstool Hosts

Jeff Lowe (81/100): ‘Deadpool 2′ is a pretty fun movie, with cool action that, at times, just didn’t work quite as well as the first one. I’ll say this off the top, if you didn’t like the original ‘Deadpool’ then stay away from this movie. ‘Deadpool 2′ is like ‘Deadpool’ but on enough steroids where it might’ve hit 62 home runs in the 1998 MLB Home Run chase. The pop culture references, jokes and fourth wall breaking are amped up to a level where it tends to beat you over the head a bit. There are plenty of spots where this works well and I laughed very hard. Some of the lines delivered in ‘Deadpool 2′ had me laughing as hard, or harder, than I did with the best jokes from the first movie and the opening credits may be worth the price of admission alone. But there were far more duds in the humor department than there were in the first movie. Because of this, the movie has some moments where it dips down and becomes a little stale. I gave the first one an 87/100 and the biggest difference for me between the two is just the fact that the first one felt more genuine and natural, where this one seemed very calculated in everything it was trying to accomplish.

Ryan Reynolds, as expected, does once again shine in the role and his love for the character just explodes off the screen. He is absolutely fantastic and lifts this movie to a level where you enjoy it a lot even when things aren’t always executed perfectly. The character development for all of the supporting characters was not great, but it was Josh Brolin’s role as Cable that really bummed me out. He was outstanding, without question, but, after playing Thanos in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, I just felt he was handed a far weaker character development wise. By the time you really understand the character and his motives, it just feels too late into the movie. I fucking love Josh Brolin and all I can think about now after seeing ‘Deadpool 2′ is how excited I am to see him reprise his role for ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’. What a monster year for one of the coolest dudes in Hollywood.

So, to close this out, despite this fairly negative review, I did like the movie a decent amount. Unfortunately, it just didn’t stick the landing in as many spots as I was expecting it to hit following the success of ‘Deadpool’ back in 2016. It may not have the genuine (dark?) charm the first one had, but anyone who likes this type of a movie won’t regret going to see in theaters.

KenJac (85/100): Successful movie sequels are pretty rare to find, especially when it comes to comedies. However, as per usual, Deadpool breaks the mold. Is ‘Deadpool 2′ better than ‘Deadpool’? In certain areas, sure. There’s a more significant and meaningful story, the humor relies slightly less on sex jokes and they managed to keep breaking the fourth wall without it being stale. Is it an overall better movie than ‘Deadpool’? Probably not. But it is absolutely as great of a sequel as we could have hoped for and just as much of a must watch as the first one.

As for my theater experiences, this should be a 10/10 for most people, especially during the first month’s showings. For me, it was not. We got to our seats and some old ass man who looked like the motherfucker from ‘Up’ was sitting next to me with some huge weird looking bag in his lap. No big deal, right? Wrong. About 5 minutes into the movie I get a whiff of what is unmistakably human shit. Gandalf took a big stinky turd right in his Depends and didn’t have a care in the world. Every now and then he would shift around and just release a new fold of decaying flesh, holding a bunch of ballooned shit air, and it would just spray right into my face. Not ideal! But I’m too much of a bitch to cuss out an old man for playing it fast and loose in a crowded theater.

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We will have our full review of ‘Deadpool 2′, along with Trillballins’ thoughts, on next Thursday (May 24th) morning’s episode of Lights, Camera, Barstool. Click here to subscribe to our twice a week movie podcast. We need your score, as well, so make sure to rate ‘Deadpool 2′ (and all May 2018 movies) on a scale of 0-100 by clicking this link. The explanation of the rating system is at the bottom of the blog.

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Robbie Fox

Robbie Fox (78/100): For me, ‘Deadpool 2’ was just about as good as good could possibly get without ever being great. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the flick a lot, but it didn’t seem to pack quite the same punch the first had.

I liked that they stuck with a more grounded storyline for this sequel, where a beam wasn’t shot into the sky with the fate of the universe in Wade Wilson’s hands. I liked a good percentage of the comedy (the fourth-wall breaking bits were the best, which is kind of a comedic crutch, but hey, I never got tired of it), and the action scenes were as brilliant and creative (mainly the hand-to-hand stuff) as any this year. This goes without saying but Ryan Reynolds once again nailed this role. His understanding of Wade Wilson’s character is truly mind-blowing.

Some things on the not-so-great side are the film’s character development, some of the humor coming off a bit forced, and its weird pacing, where the first two acts flew by at the speed of light and then the third dragged for what felt like the entire runtime of ‘Deadpool 2′, but none of that really dragged too much away from the blast that this movie was to experience for the first time. Because of that, I’d say ‘Deadpool 2′ lives up to the hype. If you liked the first, I can’t see any world in which you’d be mad at this one.

Movie Rating System Explained

First off, you can come to your final 0-100 score any way you’d like. But I figured people would like to see the process we use for the podcast. I hate Rotten Tomatoes’ scoring system. It’s shit, skewed and wrongly affects the way people make judgments on new movies. A 99% doesn’t mean it is an A+ 99/100, it just means 99% of critics thought it was at least slightly more good than it was not good. So, basically, 99% of people viewed it in the 70/100 range. The real rating, which they bury under the percentage, could very well be a 7.0/10 for a movie with a 99% critics score. ‘Lady Bird’ is the best example from recent years, as many people felt the 99% was too high. In reality, the real rating given by critics was 8.7/10. The goal of our 0-100 rating system is to not be misleading, give a definitive score and allow you to differentiate between everything that is out there to see. Okay, end rant, let’s get to my explainer:

1) Rate the movie on a scale of 0-80 for your first number
2) Give either 0 or 1 point for the following categories:
– Acting
– Character
– Cinematography
– Execution
– Music
– Originality
– Pacing
– Script/Screenplay
– Special Effects
– Story
3) Combine your scores from steps 1 and 2
4) The max score in step 3 should be a 90
5) If the movie hits a max of 90, you then move it up and down from 90-100 based on where it’d rank with other tops movies you’ve seen in the past
EX: I liked ‘Wind River’ a lot last year, but didn’t like it as much as ‘Inception’, which I gave a 95. So I slotted ‘Wind River’ in at a 94. This is where the system gets a little more “creative.”