Where 2016’s “Deadpool” was just fresh enough to be entertaining, its 2018 sequel “Deadpool 2” can’t say the same. Still, that didn’t stop it from making a ton of money and becoming 20th Century Fox’s highest grossing X-Men connected movie. That’s quite an accomplishment for a feature that’s more committed to getting an R rating than telling a worthwhile story.

“Deadpool 2” clearly follows the same blueprint as its equally successful predecessor. New director David Leitch and returning writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick inundate us with an endless cavalcade of juvenile humor, forced profanity, and CGI violence. But among its biggest problems is that fewer jokes land this time around. And the attempts at melding vulgar humor with gory action had me numb by the halfway mark.

Ryan Reynolds (in full Ryan Reynolds mode) returns as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, delivering a carbon copy performance from the first movie. Wade and his girlfriend Vanessa (a returning Morena Baccarin) celebrate their anniversary by deciding to start a family. But once again their dreams are shattered, this time when a hitman’s bullet misses Wade and strikes Vanessa, killing her.

While in mourning, Wade attempts to blow himself up, but his healing factor keeps him alive. His old friend Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) finds him and takes him to the X-Men’s mansion to heal. While there, Colossus convinces Wade to finally join the X-Men which he does to honor Vanessa. It eventually leads him to a volatile mutant named Russell Collins (a painfully bad Julian Dennison) who Wade pledges to save after a couple of weird out-of-body encounters with his dead girlfriend.

Meanwhile, a cybernetic soldier from the future named Cable (Josh Brolin) travels back in time to kill Russell for reasons that never feel as impactful as they should. It all leads to a haze of tiresome recycled gags and glaringly digitalized action sequences. Good luck finding anything beyond that. Leitch and company try to squeeze in a few moments of heart. But when everything around it comes off as self-gratifying and over-the-top, it’s hard to take seriously any attempts at sincerity.

“Deadpool 2” caters to a big audience, most of whom have no problem gorging themselves on what amounts to cinematic junk food. But if you’re hungry for something with a slight bit of substance, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Again, the filmmakers are so absorbed in delivering one-liners and meeting f-bomb quotas that they toss aside basic things like good storytelling. There are countless narrative shortcuts which are routinely excused by Deadpool making jokes about them. It’s clever the first time or two, but we eventually see through it. There’s also the terribly underdeveloped antagonists who mainly exist to boost the body count in the film’s lame climax.

Even after nearly six years and a recent revisit, “Deadpool 2” still leaves me scratching my head. How does a movie with this many flaws get so many passes? How does a movie that proudly touts its irreverence and mayhem come across as so calculated? How do people find so much connection to something so empty? I could go on but I don’t want to be that kind of guy. Of course it’s okay to enjoy “Deadpool 2” for whatever reasons you do. But for me, no amount of self- awareness or comic chaos can plug the gaping holes in this unfortunate retread.

VERDICT – 2 STARS