Karan Soni Ranked

 Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Karan Soni-whose latest project "Deadpool & Wolverine" is in theaters today.

Karan Soni's Filmography Ranked:

15.Like a Boss (C-)

14.Pokemon Detective Pikachu (C)

13.Unicorn Store (C+)

12.Strange World (B-)

11.7 Days (B-)

10.Office Christmas Party (B)

9.Goosebumps (B)

8.Ghostbusters (B)

7.Always Be My Maybe (B)

6.Safety Not Guaranteed (B)

5.Deadpool (B)

4.Not Okay (B)

3.Rough Night (B+)

2.Deadpool 2 (B+)

1.Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (A-)

Top Dog: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Across the Spider-Verse pulled off a mighty impressive feat when it managed to top its beloved predecessor. This standalone animated sensation from Sony puts the MCU's multiverse to shame with its smart approach to universe-hopping that puts the characters (Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Peter B.Parker, Spider-Man 2099) and their emotional arcs ahead of legacy cameos and time travel exposition dumps. On top of that, the action sequences, animation and soundtrack/score are all phenomenal. 

Bottom Feeder: Like a Boss (2020)

Studio comedies are so rare these days that it's kind of hard to forget about each one that comes along. Like a Boss is an unfortunate outlier to this rule. Despite noble efforts from stars Rose Byrne, Tiffany Haddish and Salma Hayek to sell its straightforward premise (a pair of best friends fight to get their small beauty company back from the cosmetics magnate that stole it from them), the film has a hard time finding enough jokes to fill its mercifully short 83-minute runtime.     

Most Underrated: Rough Night (2017)

Key Broad City contributors Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs made a pretty seamless transition to the feature space with this rowdy bachelorette party comedy that makes several inspired absurd, depraved turns and gives Kate McKinnon the space to be the comedic force of nature that she is. People have really embraced what Aniello and Downs have done on Hacks, so maybe this will get reappraised at some point down the line.

Most Overrated: Deadpool (2016)

Deadpool's vulgar meta lampooning of the superhero genre, Ryan Reynolds' perfectly realized performance as the titular character and the surprisingly sweet love story that sits underneath all of the snarky quips and severed limbs makes it a noteworthy entry into the genre. However, I strongly disagree with this being heralded as one of the best superhero movies of all time. The action is merely decent, Ajax (Ed Skrien) is a flat, forgettable villain and the pacing following its electric opening sequence is pretty erratic-particularly in the second act. I greatly prefer Deadpool 2 as it does everything this one did well along with being filled with more laughs, endearing secondary characters and considerably better action.