Deadpool & Wolverine

Once the buzz of giggling wears off, it's clear: Deadpool & Wolverine isn't here to save superhero movies. It's here to show off Disney's newly acquired IP.

Reynolds and Jackman have tremendous chemistry. The movie expertly balances the exciting, the silly, the references for the fans and the straightforward superhero stuff, even a few glimpses of actual sincerity.

One of the best, most satisfying and certainly adult roller-coaster rides of this summer.

For viewers who spend a lot of their time online, soaking up the discourse generated by insider-fan accounts and message boards, all of this will seem warmly familiar. But good luck if you're coming in with no prior knowledge.

Alternately hilarious and exhausting and stuffed with more meta-narrative than it has actual narrative, Deadpool & Wolverine is a massive corporate in-joke masquerading as a movie.

Somehow, despite the silly mayhem and hyper-meta goofing, I kinda did care about the characters, especially in the finale, which unspools a pathos firehose and blasts us with it.

Deadpool & Wolverine is the ultimate love letter to Marvel fans: The cameos and references are aplenty and brilliant, the source material is treated with respect and, best of all, it's pure, unadulterated fun.

Is it a great movie? Nah. It's too slick a Marvel package, with surprisingly meh special effects and an energy that's more desperation than inspiration. But stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are willing to bust a gut to make you laugh. So there's that.

Reynolds exhausted that creative well with the first two Deadpool entries and is only dredging up sloshy wet sand this time out.

Though the MCU has never served up the cinematic equivalent of fine dining, its films at least used to be hearty fast-food fare. Deadpool & Wolverine feels more like eating a bag of Sour Patch Kids and calling it dinner.

Although it continues to rely on tired tropes and fan service-y storytelling beats, Deadpool & Wolverine remains a fun theatrical experience for the summer and one of the better releases from Marvel in recent years.

While Ryan Reynolds still seems to be having fun playing the cheeky mercenary, both the inside-baseball comedy and the cartoonishly bloody mayhem wear out their welcomes in the film's final third.

Messy as it is, Deadpool & Wolverine is the first MCU movie in several years that's mostly enjoyable. It's also, at times, overdone.

Even draped in copious amounts of irony, the nonstop fan service grows wearisome.

Rowdy, raunchy and gooey gory, Deadpool & Wolverine delivers the action-comedy thrills that will attract Marvel acolytes and civilians seeking belly laughs.

Dotted in among the quips and Easter eggs is the superhero equivalent of Toy Story 2, a mournful goodbye to the things we once held dear, even if some of those things weren't that great to begin with.

I'm not entirely immune to the charms of this approach; there's one casting choice, in particular, that made me smile, almost in spite of myself. It's not enough to make the movie feel like less of a self-cannibalizing slog.

There are times when Deadpool & Wolverine seems to understand the futility of its own fixations. Yet the movie ultimately endorses Deadpool's left-field desire for conformity with tired, oft-stated MCU ideals.

Avengers/X-Men fans who're looking for fun, keep your ears open. The real party is in the freaky chatter.

Hall H: The Movie, offering up an onslaught of familiar (though largely forgotten) superhero faces intended to elicit knowing, nostalgic nods and applause.