'Deadpool 2' Review Round-Up: What the Critics are Saying

Digital Spy

"2016's Deadpool took us all by surprise. A troubled, decade-long development gave us the most successful X-Men movie to date, wiping the floor with its bigger-budget cinematic siblings.

So the sequel had a lot to live up to, and we can't pretend that a series of lacklustre trailers hadn't given us cause to worry.

We were totally wrong.

Deadpool 2 has as much heart as the original, and the humour is more consistent. And while we wondered whether Wade Wilson's brand of comedy had had its day, the series has moved with the times and feels as relevant and contemporary as it could be." - Digital Spy

NY Daily News

"Welcome back, Deadpool.

Marvel's indestructible mercenary, whose sequel slams into multiplexes on May 18, is incredibly sadistic. He's a little perverse, and frankly fond of recreational drugs. The only thing filthier than his torn and sleazy Spandex is his mouth.

And right now, he's the perfect "Avengers" antidote.

Thor and Captain America and Black Panther are all terrific, sure, but sometimes their righteous role-model parade seems to stretch into infinity. This raunchy mercenary has never been one — and that's refreshing." - NY Daily News

USA Today

"The non-stop revelry is what gets you in the theater, but Deadpool's identity-defining journey keeps you there — and even doles out some warm fuzzies. He proclaims it a "family film," following a scene very much not for kids, though Deadpool has a point. Returning pal Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) tells him, "You can't really live until you've died a little" — a poke at his top-notch healing ability as well as a theme that sinks in between guffaw-worthy moments and complete craziness." - USA Today

Collider

"Deadpool 2 is a weird movie. On the one hand, it's the film you expect it to be: raunchy jokes flying at you non-stop paired with gory violence. That's the character, that's the brand, and that's why the first movie was a success. But on the other hand, buried beneath all the F-bombs and superhero references is a real story about Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) learning to fight for someone other than himself and opening up his heart. It's the kind of earnest storytelling that the rest of the movie would seem all-too-eager to mock. This gives Deadpool 2 a case of tonal whiplash where you're laughing hysterically at the devil-may-care jokes only to have to pump the brakes and care about Deadpool's emotional arc. And yet at the end, Deadpool 2 is similar to its predecessor in that you'll have a blast while watching it and then almost immediately start to forget it." - Collider

The Hollywood Reporter

"There's action aplenty throughout the film, but Deadpool 2 doesn't bog down in it as many overcooked comic-book sequels do. With Reynolds' charismatic irreverence at its core, the pic moves from bloody mayhem to lewd comedy and back fluidly, occasionally even making room to go warm and mushy. On the latter front, the filmmakers walk a fine line between embracing Deadpool's mock-everything appeal and needing to make Wade a credible, emotional human. Whenever it threatens briefly to slip into corniness, though, the movie regains its balance. If sequels built on the backs of X-whatever mutants are going to thrive into the future, this installment needs (as did The LEGO Batman Movie) to convince its loner protagonist that a family of trusted partners isn't something to fear. And after one surprisingly moving version of A-ha's "Take On Me," it manages just that." - The Hollywood Reporter

Gamespot

"Overall, Deadpool 2 mostly works for all the same reasons that the original did. Reynolds carries the movie on his back--although this time around he should have shared the load a little more evenly with some of his talented co-stars, particularly Beetz and Brolin. But Reynolds' Wade Wilson is just as charming as ever, in his own twisted way, and Deadpool 2 delivers the laughs, action, and gruesome maimings that fans want." - Gamespot

Forbes

"Deadpool 2 is indeed a better, sharper, more creative film than its flash-in-the-pan predecessor. Freed from the origin story box, this second installment of the Wade Wilson franchise has its cake and eats it took, taking any number of shots at the superhero sub-genre (and modern blockbuster filmmaking in general) while still crafting a story that makes sense on its own terms and works as a character piece. I do take umbrage with certain decisions (longtime readers can probably guess the part when I mentally threw a shoe at the screen), but the off-the-cuff screenplay and witty interplay did its work to win me back." - Forbes

Variety

"Which is not to imply that the experience of watching "Deadpool 2" is in any other way comparable to self-induced vomiting. In almost every respect, this sequel is an improvement on its 2016 predecessor: Sharper, grosser, more narratively coherent and funnier overall, with a few welcome new additions. It's a film willing to throw everything — jokes, references, heads, blood, guts and even a little bit of vomit — against the wall, rarely concerned about how much of it sticks. Plenty of it does, plenty doesn't, and your enjoyment of the film will be entirely dependent on how willing you are to ignore the mess left behind." - Variety

Entertainment Weekly

"Blonde was deliberate pulp, but its fight scenes had a messy, bone-crunching veracity that DP2 mostly trades in for chaotic cartoon violence. There's a numbing sameness to the casual bloodshed here that makes the viewer almost long for the relative calm of the first film's lengthy pop culture digressions. It's in Deadpool's DNA to channel the wild id of a 12-year-old boy — a very clever one who happens to love boobs, Enya, and blowing stuff up. Which is dizzy fun for a while, like eating Twinkies on a Gravitron. Eventually, though, it just wears you out." - Entertainment Weekly

New York Times

""Deadpool 2," cracking wise at the expense of nearly every intellectual property in the DC and Marvel universes — and occasionally drawing metaphorical blood to go along with the abundant onscreen gore — uses its self-aware irreverence to perform the kind of brand extension and franchise building it pretends to lampoon. By the end, a motley band of warriors has been assembled to fight evil. Another one. Just what we needed. Those jokes about sequels lined up into the next decade aren't really jokes, are they?" - New York Times