Is this movie a great one? While it is little surprise that Deadpool & Wolverine, the retitled and somewhat repurposed third film in the Deadpool franchise (something Deadpool seems as surprised about as many critics might feel) is a crude film with gratuitous profanity, comically excessive violence, and enough meta references to tear down the fourth wall and pulverize it for good, this film has a surprising degree of heart. Indeed, the film itself might be seen as Ryan Reynolds’ love letter to the failed superhero movies that came before the successful Marvel cinematic universe that itself has fallen on tough times as of late. The sort of cynical humor that Deadpool (the character and the series of movies) possesses in spades is often viewed as being the defense of a sensitive soul, and we see a great deal of that soul for both the character and the people responsible for making the movies, especially Reynolds, who co-wrote the script with a few other people. I don’t think that everyone viewing this film is going to see it as great–the film is definitely episodic and sometimes the jokes in the movie go on for far too long–but if you are the sort of person who cares about the people who make films and find themselves abandoned when movie studios abruptly change direction, you will find a surprising degree of poignant feeling in this movie as I did.

That is not to say that this movie manages to display its heart without a lot of crude laughter. There are a lot of jokes about sex and drugs to be found here. Deadpool and Wolverine form an effective duo but they certainly do have a lot of violence issues to work out before they get to that point. The movie itself begins with a rather striking scene, where Deadpool goes looking for Logan, whose death has been blamed for dooming his world to destruction by a member of the multiverse bureaucracy which has been making its way across the contemporary Marvel cinematic multiverse with generally malign results. Having a rogue deep-state bureaucrat manipulated by a genuinely psychotic force who inhabits a lonely world where rejected superheroes go is quite daring and makes for a compelling overarching theme in a movie that focuses on the love of comic books, the desire for closure for beloved but somewhat disregarded characters (a lot of them show up here, including a Gambit with an incredible Creole accent played ably by Channing Tatum, Chris Evans as the Human Torch–not as Captain America as everyone would expect, Jennifer Garner as an Elektra unsurprisingly phlegmatic about the loss of her partner Daredevil, and a few other amazing cameos), and the power of friendship and loyalty to overcome evil.

This movie is not trying to save Marvel. It is possible that such a thing is not possible, and Deadpool, by virtue of its deliberate efforts at serving as a means of taking Marvel and its filmmaking less seriously, both by outright mocking its current state and dependence on variants and multiverses that lower the stakes of movies and characters, and by showing the historical context of the general fate of cinematic universes in general that introduce characters and franchises only to leave them hanging, is not the sort of movie that is going to save anything. Reynolds gets a lot of mileage out of pointing to his own fears (and likely that of the audience) that Disney would try to neuter Deadpool, but also manages to create a film that plays to the ridiculous nature of comic book movie adaptations in the first place, providing a means by which characters forgotten can find themselves redeemed and given a second chance at life. This film may be a bit on the uneven side, and it is certainly ridiculous and intentionally so, but it gives both laughs and has a heart in a way that comic book movies do at their best, reminding us that behind the movie characters we love are real people who often deeply love the simple joy of making movies and entertaining others, something which can be forgotten all too easily by film studios who seem obsessed with messages and far too interested in providing enjoyable entertainment to ordinary people. If you find yourself enjoying this film at all, stay through the credits, as there are both early and post-credit scenes that pay off important parts of the movie’s portrayal of superhero movies as something worth caring about.