3.5 stars out of 5
The final 45 minutes of this movie is pretty terrific superhero stuff. Go get ‘im, Spidey! Unfortunately, there are about 90 minutes prior to this that are Far From Great.
We begin by seeing a high-school Powerpoint presentation, and it’s teens doing it, so they use Comic Sans. No they wouldn’t! I was annoyed already. Then the movie tries to explain what confused me in Endgame but only confuses it more: If Peter Parker was frozen in time for five years, why are all his friends still in high school? And why don’t they look five years older? Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I’ve adjusted to Tom Holland’s aw-shucks take on Peter/Spider-Man, and Zendaya is again solid as his (I guess cougar?) love interest. But the writing is sophomoric (yeah, it’s for kids, but kids deserve better), and there’s a real cheapo-looking quality to everything except the CGI. I was actually surprised to see in the end credits that this was filmed in a couple of European locations, as a half-assed soundstage feel dominates the visuals. Dear movie company, you have 6 gajillion dollars, hire a decent cinematographer and make Europe look like Europe. Ooh, and when they identify each location on-screen, they randomly put a period at the end of the text, which also annoyed me. And, yes, more Audi product placement.
The usually reliable Martin Starr is wasted as an inept teacher chaperone on the most unrealistic class trip you’ve ever seen. J.B. Smoove, also playing a chaperone and also usually hilarious, only made me really laugh once. Jake Gyllenhaal is here as Mysterio. He’s dull early on but steps it up later — and if you’ve ever read Spidey stories you can guess the plot twist that takes forever to arrive.
As I said, the last chunk of this movie is highly entertaining, in a psychedelic techno flying shooting exploding sort of way. Then they jam an awful lot of content into the mid- and post-credit sequences, which is shoddy storytelling but hey that’s today’s Marvel. Keep the machine churning.
Jack Silbert, curator