[7.6/10] I don’t come to *Deadpool* for the plot. The first film featuring the “Merc with a Mouth” was a hilariously outré romp when it was poking fun at conventional superhero flicks and a duller indulgence when it was aping them. The second film dutifully follows in those same, blood-stained footsteps.

There is a story being told in *Deadpool 2*, one of personal loss, the reconstruction of a fractured family, and shared life experiences bringing disparate individuals together. But these are the vegetables you must eat to enjoy the sugary desserts that the movie otherwise exists to dole out. The film’s narrative is the plain white rice director David Leitch uses to convey his cinematic concoction of flamin’ hot cheetos, atomic wings, and donkey sauce to the audience.

So while the film musters a cute pairing between Deadpool and a well-rounded, picked on young man, and sets Wade Wilson on a quest to figure out the meaning of his ultimate “F-word” -- family, the real fun of *Deadpool 2* comes when the film acknowledges (often directly through its fourth-wall breaking antagonist) that this is a stock story, one that fits Wade Wilson well enough, but mainly exists to support the gags and action that are the character’s stock and trade rather than a compelling tale in and of itself.

But the balance of that is much better in *Deadpool 2* than in the character’s first film. The movie recaptures the fun, ribald chemistry between Wade and his girlfriend, Vanessa, but still has trouble mining that for pathos rather than humor. Beyond an oddly touching acoustic cover of Aha’s “Take On Me,” it belabors the strained connection between the pair, but thankfully makes it a smaller (if still important) part of the movie.

The same goes for the surrogate dad routine the film has Deadpool play for young Firefist, a budding X-man in an abusive hospital for mutants. There’s a lesson buried in there somewhere about Wade Wilson having a heart, and after a loudly noted rock bottom, bouncing back to empathize and even sacrifice for the kid. But the part of the story devoted to Deadpool reaching his epiphany is mercifully minimal, largely sidelined in favor of the parts where it’s a throughline for the character’s Bugs-Bunny-in-spandex routine.

But what a routine! Given the glut of superhero cinema these days, the genre has been aching for a strong spoof that to poke fun at its excesses and note the silliness of the whole enterprise. That’s where *Deadpool 2* shines.

The film has plenty of direct references to the other cape flicks du jour. While fighting a hulking bad guy, Deadpool spouts the same “sun’s real low” line used to subdue a familiar gargantuan green counterpart. When Cable (Josh Brolin, pulling double duty in comic book movies this summer) offers his grim and gritty riposte, Deadpool wonders if he’s from the D.C. Universe. And between references to specific comic book issues, creators who can’t draw feet, and helmets that “smell like Patrick Stewart,” Deadpool is cheerily intertextual in his callouts.

There’s also plenty of fourth-wall breaking fun to be had in a similar vein. Wade Wilson may look directly at the camera to note a “big bowl of foreshadowing.” He’ll poke fun at in-universe rival Wolverine for copying him with an R-rated box office success. He even calls out how odd it is that everytime he ends up at the Xavier School for Mutants, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are the only ones around.

Sure, some of this is fairly easy, a mad-libs of references that any casual superhero fan of recent vintage would get mixed in with a few gems for the diehards, but it’s also something no one else is doing on this scale. The fact that we’re getting a superhero spoof on the big screen, set in the X-Men universe, made on a sizeable budget with actors who, as Deadpool himself winkingly notes, have appeared in *Avengers: Infinity War* and *Green Lantern* and other caped crusades of varying quality is no small thing.

*Deadpool 2* is, more than its predecessor, an episode of *Robot Chicken*, extended to cinematic length and scale, with the blessing (and more importantly the IP) of the studio and an intertextual bent to match the film’s self-consciously juvenile stylings. That may or may not be your speed, but it’s at least a little remarkable, and offers something no other comic book film on the silver screen has.

That said, the scale works both for and against *Deadpool 2*. The action scenes are occasionally inventive -- with Deadpool’s bullet-slashing moves that have been spliced into every trailer or his resourceful use of his own broken arm to strangle an opponent -- but many are hacked to bits in the editing room. For every bit of bloody, slow-motion glory that revels in the cartoony, red-splattered violence of the film, there’s three scenes of the same undifferentiated punch-and-kick fest you could find in mid-to-big budget action flick.

The one consistent exception to this is Domino. In addition to having a delightfully blasé attitude and an excellent repartee with Deadpool, this newcomer to the franchise can also boast the best action scenes. Domino’s power is luck, and while Wade Wilson may complain about how contrived and uncinematic that is, that ability forces the directors and animator to come up with creative sequences where the conflagration of fists and metal always breaks her way.

While other fights in the film suffer from the usual pathology of empty CGI, Domino’s skirmishes always have that extra wrinkle to keep things fresh and interesting.

That’s *Deadpool 2*’s M.O. It doesn't linger on any one thing for too long, moving its story along while tossing in liberal doses of gallows humor (including a hilarious homage to *Suicide Squad*), reference humor, potty humor, and other odes to pop culture past and various bits of juvenalia. If one strain of humor isn’t your thing, or a scene isn’t immediately working, then stick around, because the next gag is coming in a hurry.

That’s what I’m after when I go to see a Deadpool movie. Lord knows we have no shortage of options, both past and present, for different flavors of superhero flicks. Despite that, the Deadpool franchise is the only one serving up this particular dish, one that’s a mix of outlandish, hemoglobin-filled fisticuffs, omnipresent meta humor, and a decidedly unserious take on a genre that the world is increasingly taking more seriously (as the box office demands). *Deadpool 2* is not for everyone, and its efforts at an emotional story or lesson mainly get in the way of its charm, but when the film is working, it’s unlike anything else in the superhero industrial complex, there to make you laugh and recoil and laugh again at the latest group of men in tights to acknowledge, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, how silly their deal is.