The film "Deadpool 2" is a bit of an odd duck to write about. The character Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is known for his unique brand of raunchy, gory, humor that includes constant "breaking the fourth wall" jokes as well as in-your-face meta-humor. While I find this kind of humor entertaining (it's kind of clever and cheeky, which is my kind of humor), I can see how others could find it very grating (comedy is subjective, after all).

This makes the comedy part of the film very hard to review, but I'm going to do my best to explain how the humor has changed/not changed since the first film.

The film starts with the titular character Wade Wilson/Deadpool going around the world, contract killing as many bad guys in as many ludicrous ways as possible. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when a personal loss sends Deadpool into a deep depression (to the point where he tries to commit suicide, but is unable to die, of course).

Things go further sideways when he runs into a mutant boy Russell Collins/Firefist (Julian Dennison) who's attempting to run away from an orphanage that's run by a religious zealot using machines and prayer to "convert" mutants back to humans. Both end up being hunted by a grizzled cyborg from the future named Cable (Josh Brolin), who wants to kill Russell for a crime he commits in the future.

This causes Deadpool to create his own team called the X-Forces, which includes a lucky mercenary named Domino (Zazie Beetz) and Peter (Rob Delaney) who's just a "regular Joe" who answered the ad.

To say any more would give away many of the best jokes and guest appearances. Surprisingly, the film deals with heavy themes including redemption after failing to save a life, how solving your problems through violence can negatively affect others around you (which is very ironic for this series and doesn't quite work because of it) and the condemnation of people who use abuse to try to change those who are different (the X-Men series is usually used as an analogy for minorities who struggle in society and the orphanage is clearly an analogy for "conversion camps.")

However, these elements stay, mostly, under the surface and only come up to influence a certain character's actions and worldview. The main focus of the film is it's humor and here's where things get a little odd (which shouldn't be a surprise for this series). All of the jokes are still at that same level of wacky, raunchy, meta-gags that made you either love/hate the original. However, there are two things I picked up on while watching the jokes.

First, many of the jokes this time around involve various comic book references and references to the quality of previous "X-Men" films. There is a great joke in the film about how a certain comic book artist is famously bad at drawing human anatomy.

However, I was one of the few who got that joke due to my knowledge of the artist and the various critiques of his work, Those who don't understand what that's referencing probably won't laugh. There are some great jokes for all members of the audience, but I couldn't help but notice that there were a lot more jokes that only large comic fans, like myself, would get so I thought it would be best to warn you.

Second, while the jokes in this film aren't the exact same ones they make in the first film (with a few key exceptions), they are making fun of the exact same things that were in the first one. I was like, "they had a checklist of things they had to make fun of in the first film but didn't exactly update it for the second one. Make a joke about Deadpool losing a body part and having it grow back really small; check. Make a joke about films like "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "Green Lantern" being terrible movies; check.

A montage of Deadpool killing people in hilarious ways; check. A joke about there only being two X-Men present at the X Mansion at any given time; check." While these jokes are still different enough and funny enough to not bother me, I was getting a sense of deja vu and wished they would find something more original to joke about.

Everyone in the cast does a great job bringing their characters to life, with the obvious standouts being Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin (Wow, Brolin has had a good month this month). Reynold's sarcastic and witty charisma prove, once again, that he was born to play Deadpool. Brolin plays Cable as the cliche, grim and gritty humorless tough guy with a tragic past which makes him a perfect character for Deadpool to comedically bounce off of.

While this film isn't as original as... the original, it still had some memorable gags and clever one-liners that kept me laughing as I recalled them in the car ride home. This film is a rare sequel that I consider neither better nor worse than the original, they both occupy the exact same level of quality in my mind. However, that's just me and as I've said before comedy is extremely subjective. I hope you use what I've written in this review to inform your decision as to whether or not to see this film. It's a flawed film, but one that I personally had a blast watching.

Score: 8.5 out of 10

Chimichangas!