Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Did a quick survey of MCU films since Avengers: Endgame (2019), and I’m running at just over 50%. So the fact that I made a point to see this on opening weekend has to count for something.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure if I did love it.

I almost want there to be some calamitous reshuffling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, where there’s a promise that anything—good or bad—can happen from here on in. This film threatened it, promising a traffic jam with all of the non-MCU movies, but everything is put to essentially back to the status quo by the time we reach the post-credit tag. I was more intrigued/flabbergasted (and equal measures of both) by the announcement at Comic Con that Robert Downey Jr. will make a return paycheck—er, performance—as Victor Von Doom in the forthcoming Avengers films than anything that happens in the film.

A best, the film seems to acknowledge the errors—both forced unforced—in The Multiverse Saga, and want to poo-poo the whole practice of multiverse movies totally. Will it even be called The Multiverse Saga anymore? One has to wonder. But try as it might not to complete re-write the formula, Deadpool (Reynolds) and company seem to want to let the fanboys know that the studio is aware there’s a transition going on, and so it manages to be at least nominally weighed down by the same table-setting that soured the fun in some of the weakest entries in the series like Iron Man 2 (2010) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

But who cares about all of that? Was the movie, despite all of the fan service that it needs to accomplish—funny? Largely, yes. I was laughing throughout. Some of the comic sequences are pretty inventive—especially the opening where Deadpool puts to rest how the movie will handle Wolverine’s (Jackman) death in Logan (2017). Word play abounds. But is it a great sign—for me as a human being, or the film as an enduring comedy—that the two jokes which I laughed at the loudest and are stuck in my head a day later both deal with famous people divorce? One of those jokes even appeared to be delivered without the subject being aware—thanks to Deadpool’s easy to ADR costume—but the other one had full—if appropriately weary—participation from the part involved.

Night at the Museum (2006)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Robin Williams

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Which elicited a shocked response and an immediate vow to rectify from my wife… I didn’t know it was so important. I’m hesitant to admit—even if it may be implied—that I’ve never seen the sequels, either.

Did I Like It: It’s hard not to like a movie like this. It was very carefully orchestrated to be pleasing and unchallenging. 

The story all fits together, if unremarkably. It’s not astonishingly funny at any moment, but any kid who saw it way back when couldn’t have been judged too harshly for cackling at the antics on display. There’s even enough of a current of intellectual curiosity at the core of the movie—with the possible byproduct of encouraging kids to actually want to visit a museum. It wouldn’t appeal only to stupid kids, or make otherwise bright children any dumber. That’s more than we can expect from many films aimed at children.

Every actor is likable, and selected for the specific purpose of being imminently likable. Indeed, is there another performer in the history of the moving picture more able to elicit those sort of feelings than Dick Van Dyke? Even Robin Williams was in One Hour Photo, and for that matter, Popeye (1980). That’s kind of a strange miracle in a film which features Ricky Gervais, a performer whose built an entire career out of being iconically unlikable.

Is it wrong for a film to be bland in this fashion? I think not, it has modest goals and largely accomplishes them. It’s not subversive in the slightest, and while one may be implied to knock the film for not reaching for more, is it more a knock against a studio system no longer capable of making children’s fare that is at all subversive. Then again, across all criteria, I may very well be the unreasonable one for even wanting something like that.