When 'Deadpool' met 'Wolverine'

(CNN) — Like its predecessors, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is loud, proudly vulgar and repeatedly shatters the fourth wall with gleeful naughtiness. Yet beneath the outlandishness, half-dozen belly laughs and nerd-centric beats resides sweet nostalgia for the last quarter-century of superhero movies, while demonstrating that Marvel Studios possesses the power to laugh at itself.

Marvel’s stewardship of Deadpool comes courtesy of what was once 20th Century Fox, which controlled the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises before Disney acquired the studio and reintegrated them into the Marvel fold.

As such, the third film, offering the enormously media-friendly re-pairing of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and their on- and off-screen bromance, serves as a valentine to the movies that Fox produced, adding up to an unusually expensive diversion to delight the midnight-screening crowd at Comic-Con.

Beyond that, Reynolds’ motor-mouthed Deadpool, the sword-wielding anti-hero who matches Wolverine’s astonishing healing abilities, takes frequent aim at Marvel, and its highly uneven track record in the five years since the studio peaked with “Avengers: Endgame.” The fact that “Deadpool & Wolverine” appears destined to provide the Disney unit with its first enormous hit in that time merely reinforces the point Marvel needed some kind of reset, although how far this franchise can be milked beyond its very particular niche remains to be seen.

Without descending into spoilers, “Deadpool” revives Jackman’s Wolverine after his 2017 sendoff in “Logan” thanks to another detour into the multiverse, where Marvel’s cinematic universe has risked becoming dense to the point of convoluted.

Still, unlike some of the movies and streaming series that have leveraged those infinite possibilities, “Deadpool & Wolverine” ceaselessly mocks the absurdities associated with them, yielding some extremely funny visual gags, cameos and one-liners that indicate whether Marvel and its mastermind Kevin Feige embrace the criticisms, they have certainly heard them.

The grudging combination of Deadpool and the ever-irritable Wolverine – finally adorned in his signature comic-book garb – seeking to save the former’s timeline creates the backbone for a classic buddy comedy, just with a tremendous amount of carnage, including the increasingly pointless fights between two guys who can hurt each other without accomplishing much more than that.

Perhaps that’s why the action – and definitely the plot – play second fiddle to the rambunctiousness of the comedy, where nothing (except maybe cocaine) seems off limits, including random jokes about Jackman’s busy career as a song-and-dance man and his real-life divorce.

The cameos don’t disappoint, although perhaps the two most significant roles beyond the central duo go to a pair of Brits fresh off prestige dramas: “Succession’s” Matthew Macfadyen and “The Crown’s” Emma Corrin.

Ultimately, though, the title really says it all, with director Shawn Levy (one of five credited writers, along with Reynolds) operating as the ringmaster for a wild circus of comic-book lore and obscure movie references that will surely reward repeated viewing down the road.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” leans hard into its R rating, although as noted, the closing credits reveal its sentimental side. Just from a marketing standpoint, the promotional campaign has benefited enormously from Reynolds and Jackman’s playful relationship, which, if there’s any acting involved, should qualify for the public-relations version of an Academy Award.

Ultimately, the movie can boast an all-too-rare quality for aspiring blockbusters: It’s just plain fun. Chalk it up as one of those rare experiences where audiences should derive as much enjoyment from watching the film as its leads appeared to have had making it, in a way that mostly, if not entirely, lives up to the hype.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” premieres July 26 in US theaters. It’s rated R.

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