I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a film more gleefully cynical about its own existence. A core tenet of the meta narrative at play rests on the idea that the audience is in on the joke here, but are we? At what point does repeatedly pointing out that this film is just another fan service packed installment in a soulless money making machine, stop laughing at the studio and start laughing at the audience for eating it up anyway? But honestly the cynicism isn’t the worst part for me because that criticism could apply to most studio blockbusters whose first priority is shareholder profits. The worst part is that the entertainment side doesn’t overcome it. While the film sets up an interesting story it quickly loses steam. After a pretty solid first act the plot rapidly becomes a jumbled mess of truly baffling cameos and forced attempts at emotional manipulation that mostly fall flat due to so little on screen character development. The emotional aspect of the story requires the audience to exclusively rely on intimate knowledge of these characters and their relationships from other movies and never gives us a good reason to root for them outside of that.

The intro scene is delightfully self aware while being very fun and Matthew McFayden is perfectly cast as a maniacal, pencil pushing dweeb but what happens from there is mostly a poorly shot mess. I wish I could say that at least the fight scenes were well done but aside from what I’m sure was a ludicrously capacious soundtrack budget, the fights are overwhelmingly lackluster and frankly ugly. In addition to washed out color grading there is also the worst kind of heavy dependence on cgi throughout that feels less like a tool for artistry and more like a money saving crutch.

Look, some of the jokes got me. The Deadpool brand of humor, while a bit tired and dated, works for the most part here. Hugh Jackmam yet again reminds us why he was the best Wolverine we ever could have asked for. The chemistry is very real between the two leads but much like we learned from Thor Love & Thunder, great filmmaking requires more than shooting the shit with your friends. The sad reality is that this film never rose above the sum of its parts for me. And honestly, its parts were pretty underwhelming on their own. I wish I had a reason to care about anything happening on screen because like much of the intended audience, I love these characters. At the end of the day, I don’t think this film is as terrible as some people insist, but it is, unfortunately, a thoroughly mid, unsurprisingly unoriginal rehashing. Also needs more x-men.