I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film start out so scattered and be able to pull out just in time to turn in a pretty great film. But make no mistake, I found the first half pretty mediocre. I almost hate to give it such a high rating because of it… but what it pulls off in the end is a sweet and weird miracle.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a multiversal saga of how Deadpool meets up with a (living) Wolverine variant, screws around for an hour, and finally go up against the forces of evil… or something like it. Oh, and they encounter some most unexpected friends.

This film is what you get when Disney buys Fox and begins to integrate the X-Men and Deadpool into the MCU. It leans heavily on our knowledge of these Fox characters and the X-Men in general. But it also leans on elements from the existing MCU multiverse and if you aren’t familiar, you may as well not show up. The film doesn’t even begin to have time to explain everything.

To get it out of the way, the first hour of this flick feels off to me. The humor, the quips, and the over-the-top swearing feel like a desperate attempt to reproduce the anarchy of the first two Deadpool films. Even if it’s the same quipster doing the quipping, it feels try-hard and off key. And then the film just fucks around for entirely too long, just doling out fan service gags and gross-out jokes for no apparent goal. It felt inconsequential and a lot like wheel spinning.

(Also, some of the above would have worked better in a cinematic landscape where Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (of all things) hadn’t tanked at the box office. But at least I got a chuckle out of the gags.).

But then a funny thing happens and the film finds its center… ironically through a massive injection of even more fan service. But it’s a fan service in a way that I didn’t see coming. It’s so far left-field, Hail Mary pass that I have to give them credit for just going for it (in that it works, is just gravy).

We get some most unexpected cameos… and what they do with one of them is pretty great on a multi-studio, multi-franchise level. But when they introduce even MORE (extended) cameos and it becomes evident that this film is really a love letter to Fox’s whole stable of Marvel films. A kind of going away present, pat on the back, and irreverent French kiss to franchises and characters long gone (or who never got off the ground).

It felt like that glorious moment in Spider-Man: No Way Home where all three spider-men launch themselves into the air and you realize we’ve been building up to this for twenty years without even realizing it. Only in Deadpool & Wolverine, who’d have even begun to imagine what they pull off. There’s a ton of good will and hugs for some characters that don’t really deserve it but, by gum, they are going to get their farewell.

And the mid-credit scene gave me such a fond smile as Disney/Marvel gives a warm hug to all the work – both good AND bad – that Fox did with their licenses… including behind-the-scenes footage of some goddamn terrible movies. Clearly someone at Disney/Marvel was willing to tip their hat before whatever reboots they have planned. Someone worked on all these movies and maybe they deserve one last moment in the sun.

And yeah, there’s some pretty fun comedy and action scenes in the flick too… it’s not ALL meta commentary and jokes. It eventually works with some wild and funny action scenes and moments. And we also get some grand emotional acting form Mr. Hugh Jackman. It’s odd that its over events we never see (he’s a Wolverine variant with his own backstory) but its still solid work. Ryan Reynolds is here too.

This flick is the Evel Knievel of superhero moves… it starts on a deep downhill ramp before coming up for a daring jump across fifteen busses. Its rare to see a movie course-correct so well but this damn movie does it. Can’t really forgive the “whatever” feeling I had for half of it, but it saves itself through fun and cool action and a heaping dose of (sometimes ironic) nostalgia.

Score: 86