Kraven the Hunter: A Review

KRAVEN THE HUNTER

Perhaps at this point, one should not ask "What were they thinking?" so much as ask, "Why do they even bother?". This year we were treated to three films built around a Spider-Man villain. I did not hate Madame Web as much as most people, finding it an enjoyable bad film. I thoroughly detested Venom: The Last Dance, a confused and convoluted horror. Now we have Kraven the Hunter, a character that I think only more serious Spider-Man fans will have heard of. Neither having the sincere goofiness of Madame Web or the self-consciously goofiness of Venom: The Last Dance, Kraven the Hunter is not fun but not downright hideous but rather a lot of nothing. 

A young man is imprisoned in a high security Russian jail, but that was part of the plan. The young man is really a master assassin who takes down a Russian crime lord. the assassin then makes a daring and brazen escape, with the guards too late realizing that the prisoner was really Sergei Kravinoff, who has taken the nom de guerre of Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). 

We then go back sixteen years where young Sergei and his brother Dmitri are spirited away by his father, crime lord Nikolai (Russell Crowe). In his view, the best way for his boys to handle the offscreen suicide of their mother is by going hunting to Ghana. There, Sergei is almost killed when he hesitates and is taken by a lion. Fortunately, a young woman whose grandmother is into voodoo is around to provide a magical potion to save his life. Moving back into the present day, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) is the owner and star of his own London club, where he is perfectly able to sound exactly like everyone from Harry Styles to Tony Bennett. Nikolai is still disappointed in Dmitri and Sergei is a stranger to him.

Sergei for his part has become an animal rights vigilante, going after poachers. This brings him into conflict with Aleksei Sytsevich, also known as The Rhino (Alessandro Nivola), who abducts Dmitri as insurance against Nikolai. Kraven, who loves his brother and unlike Nikolai is not willing to see him killed, turns once again to the voodoo queen who saved him, American lawyer Calypso (Ariana DeBose). She is somewhat helpful, but it is now up to Kraven to fight against Rhino and save Dmitri. This is complicated by Rhino's master assassin, a shadowy figure known as The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). He is able to move fast enough to not make his targets aware of where he is, giving him the chance to kill them unaware. Will Kraven the Hunter be able to defeat his newest foes? Will Dmitri prove himself or prove that he is a future great danger? Will Calypso find powers outside those from her friends on the other side?

I do not think we need worry about the rise of Dmitri as the future villain Chameleon. Kraven the Hunter seems to have gone almost out of its way to ensure that no one will care. It is to where at one point I was getting Dmitri and Sergei mixed up, so bland the characters were. Everyone in Kraven the Hunter was bland, both in their characters and in their performances. You forget that the film has two Academy Award winners in its cast, yet watching Russell Crowe and Ariana DeBose here, one wonders how they have managed to put themselves in this willingly.

My guess is that director J.C. Chandor did not look on Kraven the Hunter as a passion project because no one had any passion. As stated, everyone looked bored and oddly disengaged from things. DeBose looks downright bored with things. Calypso was a nothing character: not interesting, not exciting, serving no purpose other than to bring about Kraven's rescue on two occasions. Hechinger, I think, was trying to make Dmitri a tragic figure, but he had little to work with. Overall, there was nothing in any performance that suggested those in front of the camera genuinely cared if Kraven the Hunter was good.

Perhaps I can walk that back a bit when it comes to Crowe. He seemed to want to camp it up with his faux-Russian accent but couldn't quite commit to being deliberately over-the-top. It soon becomes The Battle of the Bad Accents in Kraven the Hunter. I at least knew that Crowe's Nikolai was meant to be Russian. Try as I might, I was not sure what Nivola was supposed to be. That also goes for Abbott's The Foreigner, whose nom de guerre would probably elicit chuckles more than gasps. I cannot say that his charcter was ill-defined. I don't think he was defined at all.

When I look at Taylor-Johnson (separate from his buff body), I see someone who I think might have been sincere in an effort to make Kraven the Hunter if not good at least serviceable. It is, I think, unfair to place blame on him for how bad Kraven the Hunter is. He had a great opening in the film, the prison escape being a highlight and strong way to start. It is once we go to a flashback that I think is around forty minutes long that Kraven the Hunter starts coming undone. The flashback is too long, gives us a very silly way to have the characters interact and stops the momentum cold. Once we go back to the present day, the film builds up almost a sluggishness to it all. 

The visual effects were at times almost shockingly bad. What is meant as a climactic moment where Rhino reveals his true self and fights both Kraven and a buffalo stampede looks dull and terribly fake. The same with Kraven's attempted rescue of Dmitri. The score too attempts to build up what is meant to be one filled with tension and excitement. It could not.

Is Kraven the Hunter one of the worst films of 2024? I think not, for there are many films that are worse and which I would choose Kraven the Hunter to see again. That does not mean that I would want to watch Kraven the Hunter again.  It is, however, a final end to any hopes of any hoped-for franchise. No one will be craving more Kraven. 

DECISION: D-

Venom: The Last Dance. A Review (Review #1889)

VENOM: THE LAST DANCE

I have not been a fan of the previous Venom films, though in retrospect, I think Venom: Let There Be Carnage is mildly passable junk entertainment. Not so Venom: The Last Dance, a nonsensical, chaotic piece of garbage that is so awful it manages to dislodge Argylle as the Worst Movie of 2024 (so far). 

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom continue hiding out in Mexico, hoping to clear their names for a killing from the last movie. However, the shadowy villain eventually revealed as Knull (Andy Serkis), who has been forced into a space prison, finds that Venom contains the Codex, the MacGuffin that will free him. With that, Knull sends his creatures to find Venom.

Also looking for our odd couple is General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who wants to capture another symbiote whom he considers menaces to humanity. Not with him on that idea are Doctors Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) and Sadie Christmas (Clark Backo), who are determined to investigate what the symbiotes are and what if anything they can do for humanity.

Eddie manages to get into the United States despite both the military and Knull's crickets after him. He bonds with a group of alien enthusiasts determine to get to Area 51 before it is officially decommissioned. They take him to Las Vegas where Eddie gets into the luxurious Paris Casino, loses what little money he has, and dances with a clearly happy Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), with whom Venom dances with to Dancing Queen.

Captured, Eddie/Venom are in great danger. Martin (Rhys Ifans), the alien enthusiast, is also in family as are his wife and kids when they sneak into Area 51 before the climatic confrontation, where the escaping symbiotes by accident or design bond with hosts to fight off the growing army of Knull's crickets. Who will live and who will die in this battle royale to save or conquer Earth?

Twenty minutes into Venom: The Last Dance, I pretty much checked out because I simply did not care. There was nothing in The Last Dance that was interesting, not to mention cohesive. I will walk that back a bit, for there was one interesting thing in The Last Dance. That was seeing Tom Hardy evolve into Nick Nolte in voice and in looks. I am often told that Tom Hardy is a serious actor devoted to his craft. That can be the case, as The Bikeriders has shown. However, it is hard to think of Hardy in such lofty terms when he not only appears in junk like The Last Dance but has a story credit with its writer/director, Kelly Marcel.

The Last Dance is rushed to where it is incoherent. I figure that for those well-versed in Venom lore, everything was clear. I however, simply had no idea who the shadowy villain was and by the end, he proved to be nothing that I wondered why we needed him in there. Well, perhaps to set up more films. I would like those who know the name of every symbiote in The Last Dance to explain why we needed a running gag of Eddie constantly losing whatever shoes he had. I cannot explain why anyone thought that was funny.

There was a lot that The Last Dance thought was funny, such as when Eddie/Venom go into the Paris Casino, dance with Mrs. Chen (an entirely pointless section) or Ifans' hippie-drippy alien enthusiast. We could not have original characters with Martin's family: you had the equally addled supportive wife, the sullen and bored teenage girl, and the more enthusiastic but sweet younger brother. I figure they have names, but The Last Dance cares so little for them that I don't think we got them. I found the lot so boring and useless that when they faced mortal danger, I actually wished the guard tower would fall. 

I was amused by Backo's Sadie Christmas only because I asked if her name was some kind of odd homage to Denise Richards' Dr. Christmas Jones from The World is Not Enough. I spent much time wondering why her name was Christmas, which is a sign of how bored I was at The Last Dance. 

As a side note, I did wonder why Mrs. Chen and Venom opted to dance to Abba's Dancing Queen and not Donna Summer's Last Dance. 

There are no performances here. Hardy, continuing some oddball voice, struggles to be funny or menacing. Ejiofor does nothing but look stern, but given the circumstances I can give him credit for not consistently laughing at what he had to do. I'm sure that I have seen Juno Temple in something, but she had no real character to play. Lu is the only one who is clearly having a ball, fully aware that this is nothing but just so glad as to be getting paid for all this.

Perhaps that is harsh on Ifans, who is also aware that The Last Dance is not worth anything other than I hope a good paycheck.

If anything, Venom: The Last Dance makes an effort to get us to feel sad when Venom sacrifices himself. The film pumps out music to try and have us sob both in Dan Deacon's score and the use of Maroon 5's Memories. I did not feel sadness, only a mix of irritation and chuckles. 

I held out as long as I could. I fought off strong contenders like Deadpool & Wolverine and A Family Affair and Joker: Folie a Deux and The Crow. However, I have to finally throw in the towel. Venom: The Last Dance is worse than Argylle. 

DECISION: F

Madame Web: A Review (Review #1795)

 

MADAME WEB

When is a Spider-Man movie not a Spider-Man movie? 

I was, to be honest, unaware that there was such a thing as a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe where our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man does not actually appear or is even mentioned by name. Instead, we get various characters from his world with the vague notion that he (be it Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland) is hovering about somewhere in Queens. 

All of these films have some connection to Spidey but don't actually feature the webslinger. There were Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, films that proved wildly popular and successful which despite all logic I did not end up hating. There was Morbius, as great a debacle as any in the comic book film genre.  Now we get Madame Web, the newest effort to create a franchise that seems doomed from the get-go. Perhaps it is to the film's credit that I did not end up hating Madame Web, even if I cannot speak for other members of the audience, but more on that later.

Darkest Peru, 1973. Constance Webb (Kerry Biché) is a pregnant scientist searching for a mysterious spider with healing properties. Once found, however, her fellow explorer Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) betrays the group, killing everyone to get the rare spider. Connie is hit in the chaos, but the Arañas, a mysterious people who have been the protectors of the rainforest and have spider-like abilities, manage to save Connie's baby if not Connie herself.

Move on thirty years, where that baby is now Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson). She's a cynical, emotionally distant EMT in NYC, saving lives but vaguely aware of whom she is saving. Her closest friend is her EMT partner, one Ben Parker (Adam Scott), and even that is not a particularly close relationship. Cassie has a near-death experience that leads to her having visions of the immediate future, though that future is not set. 

Good thing that Sims is not aware of Cassie's clairvoyance or her connection to Connie. He is too busy trying to track down three teenage girls whom he has recurring visions of them killing him when he is older. Sims figures that if he can kill them now, he can avoid his fate. He uses vaguely futuristic technology to track down the three troublemakers. There is sweet-natured Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), sarcastic rich bitch Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor) and timid Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced). 

Cassie eventually finds that they are all connected, and she becomes their unofficial protector when she has a vision of a strange spider-like man hunting them all down. She asks Ben to care for them while she goes to Darkest Peru to uncover the past that binds them all together. Ben, who has his own issues in caring for his pregnant sister-in-law Mary (Emma Roberts), does his best, but they still face great danger. Will our heroines save themselves and bring Ezekiel down? Will Ben Parker be a good Uncle Ben to his new and unnamed nephew?

Is it damning with faint praise to say that Madame Web is not the worst film of 2024 that I have seen so far? Out of the six 2024 film releases that I have seen as of this writing, Madame Web is the second-best. That is not a compliment: Madame Web is so clunky, lifeless and pointless that it is inexplicable as to why Sony and Columbia in association with Marvel continue plunging into films that just do not work. 

Everything in Madame Web is pretty much a fiasco. Right from the beginning, director S.J. Clarkson makes one oddball decision after another that it quickly becomes a fun experiment finding which element is the worst one. The film opens with a very poorly shot sequence, where the camera for no discernable reason zooms all over the place while also indulging in various Dutch angles. One genuinely wondered if the cameraman was having a stroke and they decided to just keep rolling. More bizarrely, this same sequence was essentially replayed later in the film.

Granted, the information Cassie is presented is new to her. However, not once did anyone ask when going over Clarkson's screenplay (writing along with Matt Samaza, Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker) why they just couldn't go flashback instead of repeating themselves. Add to that the sheer illogic of it all: Cassie, who is technically a fugitive, leaves three teen girls with her bestie, flies to Peru, goes into the jungle, manages to find the mysterious Spider-People and then returns to New York in apparently a matter of hours? This trip would have taken days if not weeks, with Cassie and the girls being hunted down at every second. You can suspend disbelief for only so long before it becomes too ridiculous.

The screenplay, over and over, appears to go out of its way to be idiotic. What the villain actually does is unclear. Did he gain fame and power with the spider? How does he get visions of his future assassins? How do he and Cassie manage to communicate telepathically? Why insist on killing the three in one blow when killing them one-by-one would have been easier? 

If that weren't enough, having a call-out to a previous Spider-Man film is eyerolling. "And when you take on the responsibility, great power will come," the Spider-King tells Cassie. On a myriad of levels, this does not make any sense. "With great power, comes great responsibility" is from the 2002 Spider-Man film. However, Madame Web cannot tie itself into the Tobey Maguire version because Uncle Ben is already a senior citizen and Peter is a teenager. Madame Web, moreover, is set in 2003 and the unnamed nephew to Ben Parker is born at the end of the film. It can tie in, albeit forced, with the Andrew Garfield version, but again it still would be almost impossible to do so. Forget the Tom Holland version. Neither Garfield or Holland, to my recollection, quoted the "Great Power" line, so why use it here?

Actually, forget connecting Madame Web to any of the "Sony-Verse" films. 

Madame Web's disaster goes beyond the screenplay. Everyone in the film is so blank and emotionless. It is astounding to see such a collection of bad performances. One bad performance, I can understand. Having the entire cast be awful is on the director. 

Dakota Johnson is not even trying. One wonders if she was literally drugged into performing. She recited her lines as if she was trying to figure out what the words meant, bringing nothing to the role. Cassie has no personality, no charisma, nothing that indicates she is a functioning human. The trio of Sweeney, Merced and O'Connor all similarly look expressionless. They never connected to each other, but oddly they never looked like they were in conflict. 

Tahar Rahim is an interesting case. He is French, and as such I do not know how strong his English is. He may be quite fluent, but Madame Web can't show us how. There is a curious disconnect between when he speaks and when we see him speak, like the dubbing is off. At times, I wondered if the film was trying to hide him speaking (hence the strange use of Dutch angles and negative space). Scott and Emma Roberts as Ben's sister-in-law Mary were there to do a job and move on.

Madame Web is a nothing. While I have read and heard the vitriol about it, calling it the worst film they have ever seen or the worst ever made, I thought of it more as an enjoyably bad film. It is not good. It is not even a "so bad it's good" film. It is just that in a world that has Lisa Frankenstein and Argylle, I cannot call Madame Web the worst film of 2024.

The best summation that I can give Madame Web comes not from me but from another audience member at the screening I attended. While he did not shout out his comments, he was audible enough in his succinct review. He said, and I quote, "This movie sucked". That pretty much captures Madame Web perfectly.

The Original Madame (Web)

DECISION: D+

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. A Review (Review #1724)

 

SPIDER-MAN: 

ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

It is difficult to be the voice of dissent, the one who says, "No", the one who argues against the near-fanatical cries of the majority. I am not a dissenter by choice or desire. I speak what I see. When it comes to the reaction many have towards Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a line in Akira Kurosawa's RAN comes to mind: "In an mad world, only the mad are sane". 

I am not "mad" in the angry or insane manner (at least I hope not in the latter). However, I probably will be declared as such by those who have proclaimed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as "one of the greatest films ever made in the history of cinema" and "peak cinema". Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not a bad film per se, but it is not this generation's Citizen Kane, not even close.

As a side note, I am curious to know if those declaring Across the Spider-Verse "one of the greatest films ever made in the history of cinema" have ever even heard of either Citizen Kane or RAN, let alone seen them. 

It has been five years since the events of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is still struggling to balance his life as a Brooklyn teen with being a superhero. His parents Jeff Morales (Bryan Tyree Henry) and Rio (Luna Lauren Velez) worry about what is to become of their distracted son.

If only they knew what he really was up against. Not only is he facing off against a villain he initially dismisses as "the villain of the week" known as The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) but now back from another universe comes Gwen Stacy aka Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld). She has her own issues in her universe, what with her dad Captain Stacy (Shea Whigham) thinking "Spider-Woman" killed Gwen's friend Peter Parker. Gwen, now having left her universe, is part of a special team of Spider-Beings who must prevent anomalies in the various Spider-Verses.

Miles secretly goes to Mumbahattan, where the cocky Indian Spider-Man, Pavitr Pravhakar (Karan Soni) resides. Miles saves Pavitr's girlfriend's father Sergeant Singh, but that begins the collapse of this universe. Whisked away to the Spider-Society HQ, Miles reencounters his unofficial mentor Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) and Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). Miles' meddling has prevented a "Canon event", something that needed to happen to have that world's Spider-Man be whom he was destined to be.

It is now that Miles learns his "Canon event": the death of his father after he rises from Sergeant to Captain. He is determined to stop it, and if it means fighting off every Spider-Being, he will do so. Even the news that Miles was already an anomaly due to being bitten at all, let alone by the wrong spider, cannot dissuade him from saving future Captain Morales. Unfortunately, Miles ends up in the wrong universe, one where his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) is still alive and works for the supervillain known as The Prowler. In a shocking twist, The Prowler is none other than Miles Morales! Now, a myriad of Spider-Beings must join forces to save the non-Prowler Miles.

That is a lot of plot for what is essentially the second part of a two-part film (the third film Beyond the Spider-Verse scheduled for next year). One element that I found extraordinary was that Across the Spider-Verse is proud to spend so much time on almost anything that does not involve the central plot (Miles attempting to stop his Canon event). The first twenty minutes, which are also the pre-title scenes, revolve around Spider-Gwen. The next twenty to thirty minutes revolve around Miles' domestic issues, down to being late for his parents' party. If my calculations are correct, that means it is almost a full hour in this two-hour twenty-minute film before we get  Gwen and Miles to reunite.

That, in turn, leads to extended sequences involving the Indian Spider-Man which in turn throws in Hobie Brown aka Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) which leads to finally getting Miles to Spider-Central. I, for my part, cannot be convinced that so much could have been cut or trimmed to move the story forward.

Here though, I imagine the fans who have declared Across the Spider-Verse their generation's Citizen Kane do not care. They are getting a glut of Spider-People, down to the live-action versions via archival footage. However, I found that there can be too much of a thing, good or bad. 

I will grant that the animation itself is quite beautiful. It also, like in Into the Spider-Verse, manages to blend the various styles well, sometimes in the same scene, without being jarring. There are impressive sequences in Across the Spider-Verse that the viewer will enjoy.

However, what apart from the look, or looks, of the film does Across the Spider-Verse offer? There is certainly a lot and I do mean A LOT of spectacle but I cannot find logic to having taken up so much time with unnecessary things. The comedy bits where Miles has to both fight The Spot (who is forgotten for almost the whole movie) and his various encounters with crime that delay him to the school meeting did not work for me. 

I was puzzled over Miles' "Canon event". I thought his was Uncle Aaron's death, not his father's impending one. Wasn't it after Aaron died that Miles adopted his Spider-Man mantle? Moreover, given that his father's last name is "Morales", isn't Jeff already Hispanic? How is Miles "biracial" when from what I can see, both his parents are Latino? I could go with Afro-Latino, but how is he "half-black, half-Puerto Rican" when again, "Morales" is a Hispanic surname and thus, makes his father at least part-Hispanic?

Across the Spider-Verse is at times very frenetic, particularly in the Mumbahattan section as various Spider-People come across, or when Miles is finally at Spider-HQ to meet the intimidating Miguel O'Hara. That perhaps should be expected, as Into the Spider-Verse had that same manner. I just think that in that film, the various reprises to their separate origin stories were more lighthearted. Here, it was just repetitive. 

I figure some scenes were just there to set up characters for Beyond the Spider-Verse (why have a LEGO Spider-Man when he literally added nothing to Across the Spider-Verse), but why not just include them at Spider-HQ? 

At one point in Across the Spider-Verse, I literally wrote in all caps, "THIS IS BORING" and I stand by that. Across the Spider-Verse is not "one of the greatest films ever made in the history of cinema". Not even close. It is a wildly visually arresting film but far too long for being essentially a midpoint in a trilogy. 

DECISION: C-

Morbius: A Review (Review #1590)

 

MORBIUS

Without a hint of irony, I can say that Morbius is astonishing. Astonishing in that the mind boggles over how alleged professional in film could make something simultaneously bland and horrendous. Morbius is somewhere between disaster and unmitigated disaster: rushed and incomplete, boring and nonsensical, it is a low point for the comic book film genre.

As children, Michael Morbius and his friend/"brother" Lucien aka Milo suffer from a rare blood disease. Twenty-five years later Morbius (Jared Leto) is a brilliant scientist who has developed synthetic blood to treat his disease. Convinced that vampire bats can help provide a cure, he procures hundreds of them to do his mad science experiments.

Despite the trepidations of his lab partner Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), he experiments on himself. Naturally, things go awry: Morbius becomes a vampire, with extraordinary physical powers. However, the blood lust disgusts Morbius and he begins a search for a safe antidote.

Milo (Matt Smith) has no qualms about living it up as a living undead. He kills with pleasure, enjoying his newfound physical freedom. The various killings are being investigated by Agent Simon Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) and his Boy Friday, Agent Rodriguez (Al Madrigal), the comic relief. The conflict between Michael and Milo will lead to a conflict between these ersatz brothers, where not all will survive.

In the two mid-credit scenes, Adrian Toomes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man film Spider-Man: Homecoming ends up suddenly in this universe; as Vulture, Toomes suspects Spidey had a hand in being in this strange new world. Meeting with Morbius, he suggests an alliance.

Ah, Morbius, trying to have its cake and eat it too. I can't think of a film, at least this year, that has bungled even the most basic elements of filmmaking as this one. Just about every element in Morbius is awful that it becomes difficult to single a good thing in the film. 

It is not the acting alone. Leto makes Michael Morbius less a conflicted man than a blank figure. One would not be blamed if instead of a vampire, Morbius was revealed as a zombie given how dull Leto made him. Whether it is summoning vampires to help him fly (don't ask) or romancing Martine, he looks bored with it all. 

Sadly, almost everyone save Smith, Madrigal and Gibson followed Leto's example. Arjona and Jared Harris as Michael and "Milo's" father figure looked as if they wanted to be anywhere but here. Smith figured he was in junk and went all-in on the camp. His villain, while with little rhyme or reason (was he independently rich or dependent on Harris' Dr. Nicholas) at least had some fun with things. Madrigal overcompensated with the comic relief in a desperate effort to inject some humor into something that was taking itself far too seriously.

Gibson on the other hand, somehow managed to be accidentally funny as Stroud, someone who tried to play the situation straight but instead made the preposterous nature of Morbius more obvious.  

One can't blame the actors entirely. It is hard to make lines like "You don't want to see me when I'm hungry" any less ridiculous sounding. Matt Samaza and Burk Sharpless' screenplay gave no one except perhaps for Smith anything to really work with. The story needlessly jumps from present to past and back with no setup. We start with Morbius hunting vampires, then to his childhood, then to his sudden elevation to Nobel laureate. 

Worse, when they are in Michael and Lucien's past, here things jump more. Michael just names Lucien "Milo" because he's seen so many ill boys that he can't be bothered to remember their names, but as soon as Milo 4.0 starts dying, he suddenly becomes frantic for someone he showed total disinterest literally seconds prior. Later on, we see Milo/Lucien bullied, jump to Michael asking what will happen to Milo, then see the aftereffects of Milo's bullying.

It does not make any sense, but Morbius does not care to make sense.

The visual effects look cheap, cheaper when they hide the gore to appeal to a PG-13 crowd. Efforts to tie this to a larger universe (probably the Venom-Verse) by throwing in The Daily Bugle fall flat. It is strange that Morbius feels simultaneously rushed and slow, waiting for something to happen as it flies by.

In some ways, Morbius feels like The New Mutants: cheap, a bit flat, and without much reason for being. The difference between the two is that The New Mutants was at least more aware of its limitations than Morbius was. 

I have no interest in the ever-expanding multiverses of the various comic book films, finding things more convoluted in an effort to appeal to middle-aged teenage boys who refuse to let go of their childhoods. Morbius may be a quick fix between MCU or DCEU films, but expanding into these worlds is sucking the life out of cinema. 

DECISION: F

Spider-Man: No Way Home. A Review (Review #1564)

 

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

Author's Note: This review will have spoilers. If that bothers you, I'll use the words a high-ranking non-furloughed Administrator told me when I told her that many formerly furloughed staff were still traumatized over their experience and near layoff.

"They really should just get over it".

I too have affection for Spidey, though that affection has never extended to Tony Stark, Jr. The Marvel Cinematic Universe to my mind has made Peter Parker into a total blithering idiot, forever going on about "THIS REALLY OLD MOVIE" that is "old" because it was released before he was born. I have long held that the MCU is the world's longest and most expensive soap opera. Spider-Man: No Way Home is the Christmas/anniversary special to said soap opera.

Picking up right where Far From Home left off, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been outed as Spider-Man by The Daily Bugle website impresario J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). This news does not surprise his lady friend Michelle Jones-Watson (Zendaya) or Ned (Jacob Batalon) the Patrick Star to Peter's SpongeBob SquarePants. The havoc this causes to not just their lives but those of Peter's Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and her beau Harold "Happy" Hogan (Jon Favreau) is so great that Peter, MJ and Ned are rejected by MIT, which doesn't want the negative publicity.

At this point I am dead-serious in asking how it is remotely possible that Peter, Ned, MJ or their frenemy Flash (Tony Revolori) could possibly be MIT candidates. They are all idiots, total absolute idiots. I find the idea of multiverses invading each other more believable than the idea that any of them possibly being accepted into MIT (with Flash actually getting in). 

After all, Peter is so intelligent that he, rather than file an appeal to MIT, decides to use magic.

Who else to consult on this matter than Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch)? Peter knows "Sir" can whip up a spell to have everyone forget Peter is Spider-Man. Typical of Zoomers however, Peter immediately begins making demands on who can remember, causing Strange to lose focus and control of the spell. That little bit of interference causes multiverses where others know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man to enter this realm.

Thus, Peter Parker is hunted down by the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) and The Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, as well as Electro (Jamie Foxx) and The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) from the Marc Webb Amazing Spider-Man films. Everyone is confused, but despite Strange's warning that the villains cannot be changed, the MCU Spidey thinks he can change them.

That, however, leads to tragic circumstances, but do not lose hope. If the villains could have been brought from one universe to another, what is to say that those universes Peter Parkers could not have slipped through. Thus, both Spider-Man II (Tobey Maguire) and Spider-Man III (Andrew Garfield) join forces to save the worlds, though not without great sacrifices and surprise help. With things mostly restored, Peter now strikes out on his own, rebuilding his life as your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

As I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home, I came to the realization that the film is essentially the MCU version of the Doctor Who twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors. In that special, two former Doctor Who leads joined the then-current actor playing the title role (along with a doppelganger to play the role in place of the actor who had passed away by then) as various versions of The Doctor to fight against new and old enemies. I liked The Five Doctors, a nice nostalgic trip to celebrate the television show.

As such, I understand the enjoyment many got from No Way Home. It gave fans a chance to look back at a franchise that has had three leads and a myriad of villains, some of which impacted their fandom and youths (though I doubt The Amazing Spider-Man films are as loved as the Raimi and/or MCU versions). However, nostalgia goes only so far with me, and No Way Home is like the previous MCU Spider-Man films: big on the dumb.

I have so many questions revolving around the logic in No Way Home apart from the "these kids could get into MIT"? That I will leave for another time, but for now I think that the film gives audiences what they want. I cannot fault them for that, but I can say that it does not convert me to thinking it good, let alone a Best Picture contender.

No Way Home does one thing that impressed me tremendously. The Tom Hardy cameo allows for Sony and Disney to have their cake and eat it too. His Eddie Brock/Venom manages to pop in and out in such a way as to introduce a new villain for the next MCU Spider-Man film while keeping the Venom franchise safely tucked away from this particular arachnid. 

At this point I would like to point out that Tom Holland was a month away from turning six years old and was sixteen years old when Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man respectively were released. Tobey Maguire, I also note, is 21 years older than Holland, thus making him old enough to be Holland's father (Garfield is a mere 13 years older). To be fair neither Maguire nor Garfield looks their respective ages, but one should give credit where it is due. Both easily slip back into their roles to where it is believable that they could still be Spider-Men in their own universes. Holland too goes back into his "Peter as near-total moron", though here he does have moments of maturity in how his actions affect others.

Cumberbatch is fun as the less serious Strange, looking on the antics of his "Scooby-Doo" gang with a mix of irritation and puzzlement. He can be serious when the need arises, but given he was shunted off into the multiverse for long stretches he does not play a major part in No Way Home.

As a side note, both No Way Home and the post-credit scenes play out like trailers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Make of that what you will.  

The best performances come from two of the three Raimi Spider-Man villains. Molina, with some de-aging effects, brings back the conflicted Doctor Otto Octavius: evil yet able to do the right thing. Dafoe's Norman Osborne continues to be the standard to which all Spider-Man villains are held to. He is equally adept at being the confused, frightened man and the gleefully villainous Green Goblin.  

Given that we have so many villains, the others are lost in the shuffle. While Foxx's Electro is the third major villain, he is given little to do. His statement that he thought Spider-Man III was black and that in some other universe there is a black Spider-Man was a nice hint for Miles Morales, though if No Way Home had really wanted to be bold, it would have given us a live-action version to match the brilliant Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse.

Either that or Spider-Ham. 

Ifans and Church were essentially voice-actors, playing little to no role in No Way Home. Tomei and Favreau were equally poorly served. Zendaya continued the same sarcastic, scowling MJ, though little moments where she appeared to be more than a quip-spouting machine creeped up.

Saying one did not like Spider-Man: No Way Home seems almost like saying one does not like puppies or Mom's apple pie. It is not terrible, but it is little more than fan service. I cannot fault it for that, but I cannot celebrate that either. 

Next Marvel Cinematic Universe Film: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

DECISION: C+

Venom: Let There Be Carnage. A Review (Review #1536)

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE

The original Venom was a curious film for me: while I gave it a negative review I also thought it the Most Underrated Film of 2018. I didn't hate it but thought it was a bad film. Unsurprisingly, we had a sequel. Venom: Let There Be Carnage however, does surprise in that it is short, simple and living up mostly to what its fans want.

Serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), last seen in a cameo from Venom, is back. He uses reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) as his unofficial spokesman, but with the help of Eddie's symbiote Venom, Eddie finds many of Cletus' corpses. This discovery gets Cletus the death penalty, but an earlier encounter with Eddie/Venom where Cletus bites Eddie allows Cletus to ingest a touch of the symbiote.

With Cletus now infected with his own symbiote, a red figure named Carnage, Cletus escapes San Quentin. He now has two missions, the first to rescue his long-lost love Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris), a mutant with the power to shriek destruction with her voice. The second: to enact revenge on Eddie, Venom and Detective Harrison (Stephen Graham), the man who early in his career shot Frances aka Shriek and unwittingly put her away in the secretive Ravenscroft Institute.

Eddie and Venom are continuously at odds over their roles in each other's lives and have a falling out with Venom moving out of Eddie's body and causing his own mayhem. This danger, though, forces them together, especially as Eddie's former fiancée Anne (Michelle Williams) and her own fiancee Dan (Reid Scott) are in danger. It's a battle royale where not everyone survives. Eddie and Venom, however, are learning to coexist, but will a new universe bring unexpected rivals?

Venom: Let There Be Carnage comes in at a surprisingly brisk 97 minutes, putting it at odds with many comic book-based films. The two recent entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, came in at over two hours and ten minutes each. Surprisingly, every MCU film is longer than Let There Be Carnage, with the shortest ones running fifteen minutes longer.

As such, perhaps one of the pleasures of Let There Be Carnage comes from the fact that a lot of fat was cut, reducing things to the mere basics. Even Cletus' murderous background is captured in a simple (and deliberately simplistic) animation sequence where an MCU film would have spent much more time going into things. We got the most pertinent information needed and moved on.

Perhaps that has some drawbacks overall (you'd have to be a Venom aficionado to know what the Ravenscroft Institute is or who those evil figures were. However, on the whole these points are not major points for Let There Be Carnage. Rather, all you need to know is that Frances is being held prisoner, motivating Cletus to break her out. 

Another point where Let There Be Carnage is different from most MCU/comic book-based fare is that it doesn't take itself seriously. There is little of the self-importance or grandiose manner that many comic book films have. We see this especially in Hardy's performance, where he doubles down on the slightly nebbish, bumbling Eddie. It stretches believability that the hulking Hardy could be so almost wimpy, but Hardy does a strong job when enduring the various indignities Venom inflicts him.

Let There Be Carnage, in fact, doubles down on the curious bromance between Eddie and Venom, two beings who are learning to live with each other, bringing out the best and worst in each other. That bizarre comedic element lends to the idea that Let There Be Carnage almost plays as a buddy comedy rather than a more straightforward and self-serious comic book film.

As a side note, when did comic book or graphic novel film adaptations started looking like they were adapting Russian novels exploring the meaningless of life?

Going back to the performances, Harrelson does a strong job with Cletus, not exactly camping it up but not delving too deeply into Cletus' twisted world. He keeps between enjoying being evil and having a love motivation. Even when threatening his "father" as Carnage to immediately clarify he didn't mean the Catholic priest we get that Let There Be Carnage is meant to be entertaining versus brooding. Scott has some fun as the lone sane person Dan, navigating this bizarre universe in a realistic way. After overhearing that the symbiotes are affected by "fire and sound", Dan asks "Fire & Sound? Is that a band?"

It is unfortunate that Williams and to a lesser extent Harris were reduced to "damsels in distress", with little to do apart from being the motivations for Eddie, Cletus and Dan to come to the rescue. However, again it was not a deal-breaker.

One word of caution though: there are some scenes that I think are too violent and graphic for younger kids. As such, I would advise against taking anyone under 7 or at the very least to be cautious when taking someone between 7 to 12. Even a more cuddly Venom can still be a bit gruesome for some.

If Let There Be Carnage is a bit rushed, it is not a flaw. The film doesn't seek out to be anything other than a mindless bit of mayhem. I don't fault a film for living up to what it aims for.

DECISION: C+

Spider-Man: Far From Home. A Review

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

I have been highly critical of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's take on Spider-Man. While I've thought well of Tom Holland as our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, I have been endlessly irritated by how he is essentially a blithering idiot, forever going on about "THIS REALLY OLD MOVIE" (i.e. any film released before his birth) or how for someone who started out as a teen whiz-kid he seems incapable of the most basic rational thought.

And I'm not even going to get into how he is so far from the traditional origins of beginning his life of crime-fighting thanks to his Uncle Ben's death.

While Avengers: Endgame is seen as the actual end of Phase Three of our world's longest and most expensive soap opera, Spider-Man: Far From Home is the actual end, or at least a coda on this season's finale, a bit of a holiday special. I know many love the comic hijinks and teen antics of our Queens gang, but by now I figure the MCU audiences are not particular on things like plot. They are perfectly content with Far From Home being essentially a mashup of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 with of all things The Incredibles.

The Blip (also known as The Snap, when half the world's population disappeared only to come back) has caused some issues among teenagers who are technically five years older but look exactly as they did before. In any case, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his wacky friends are all going to Europe for a school trip.

Who knew Queens high schools had that much dough?

Going along for the trip are Peter's unrequited love MJ (Zendaya), his wacky best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), his enemy Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) and two new (at least to me) figures: Tracy Flick-like Betty Brant (Angourie Rice) and Brad Davis (Remy Hii), a rival for MJ's affection. Our appropriately if perhaps illogical multicultural gang is under the watchful eyes of teachers Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr) and Mr. Dell (JB Smoove).

Peter, still mourning his mentor/father-figure Tony Stark's death, just wants to be a teen and not the new Tony Stark. While Stark's right-hand man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) might want him to succeed Iron-Man, Peter would rather just go to Europe and declare his total love to the dour, sarcastic MJ. Even the presentation of a gift from the late Stark, a pair of glasses that connect Peter to artificial intelligence EDITH is something he struggles with.

Struggles with in both using and figuring out how to use it, as his first efforts resulted in a drone attack on his love rival that nearly killed them all.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) insists Spider-Man help them, going so far as to manipulate the school's itinerary to suit his needs. After his group survived an attack by a water creature in Venice, Parker is recruited to help Quentin Beck, given the new name Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Beck claims to be from an alternate Earth who has come to our Earth to fight these Elementals before they destroy our world as they did his. After joining forces with Spider-Man (here named "Night Monkey" to avoid any connection to Peter Parker), Parker transfers control of EDITH to Mysterio.

With an hour to go, you know this is not the brightest of ideas.

We quickly find that Beck is in truth a bitter ex-employee of Stark Industries who has joined forces with other ex-employees for a master plan to masquerade as a hero by faking attacks. Now that he has EDITH, he can create the largest monster to fight and take on the new mantle of Ultimate Superhero.

With MJ having figured out Peter Parker is Spider-Man, it is now up to him along with his appropriately if illogical multicultural group to stop Mysterio.

For those interested, there is a scene where The Daily Bugle.Net's J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) outs Peter Parker as Spider-Man.

I have often said that I can "get" where a film is going or what it aims for yet not be on board with it. Spider-Man: Far From Home is one such film. I know it wants to be a mashup of teen comedy and Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, but I found so much of it so idiotic I wanted to throw the remote at the screen ten minutes into it. Maybe it's a generational thing, but why choose Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You for an In Memoriam montage over Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You or Angel or even Puff Daddy/Faith Evans I'll Be Missing You?

Maybe Celine Dion's satanic Trashtanic Lust Theme My Heart Will Go On would have been better, but now I digress.

I flat-out refuse to believe that in any universe that Betty and Ned would be in any kind of relationship. That's something out of Eurotrip, but that was meant to be idiotic. Nothing suggests that our Tracy Flick clone would want to be anywhere near someone as stupid as Ned, let alone be both erotically and emotionally enthralled with him. As played by Batalon and Rice, they didn't bother to try to make it believable, as if we all knew it was false, a joke. Maybe that's what MCU fanboys want but it really distresses me that people ask so little of their films.

Same goes for the love triangle of Peter, MJ and Brad. Why are Peter and Brad so besotted with someone who has no defining characteristic but her scowl? You knew what would happen when Brad walked in to see a pantless Peter and a hot European woman together. It is too lazy a setup. The film had nothing for Revolori to do. He doesn't convince anyone that he is a super Spider-Man fan or a Peter Parker hater. His performance, of what I can remember, is of him screaming more than Fay Wray in King Kong. His take on Flash is nowhere near interesting enough to inspire anyone to follow him on social media.

It's not entirely his fault: the screenplay gives him nothing to work with.

As a side note, I'm puzzled on the casting. I know Far From Home wants to be multicultural almost to the point of parody, and one can admire their efforts for diversity. However, why keep the character's original names? You cast a Filipino, a Guatemalan and a Chinese as Ned, Flash and Brad respectively and specifically to have diversity, so why not just change their names to reflect that? It just seems so peculiar to me to go out of your way to have a diverse cast only to pull back and keep the very Anglo/WASP names.

Gyllenhaal looked like he was having fun camping it up for all its worth as Mysterio, which is different from Jackson't totally bored take on Fury. I suppose after failing to attract the Academy's attention via psychological thriller (Nightcrawler), arthouse cinema in dual roles (Nocturnal Animals), physical transformation (Southpaw) and "inspirational biopic" (Stronger), he just wants to take the money and run. One doesn't need to be well-versed in Marvel mythos to know this Mysterio is a villain masquerading as a hero.

For better or worse, on seeing him in Venice, the first thing that came to mind was Edna Mode's declaration of "NO CAPES!" when he's fighting the Water Elemental. I genuinely thought Far From Home was taking inspiration from The Incredibles' Syndrome in the fake superhero story. I know the film is also a comedy, but was Mysterio/Syndrome supposed to be that silly?

Not that this bit of dialogue wasn't already silly. As the kids look on, someone says, "Who's that guy? (bringing back memories of Grease 2). "I don't know, but he's kicking that water's ass!", is the reply. I hope that exchange was meant to cause laughter.

I suppose it was nice to see actors from previous MCU films pop up, but unlike the fanboys I have never bothered to remember the smorgasbord of bit players.

Far From Home also echoes Spider-Man 2 in its theme of whether Peter Parker will be a superhero or a regular person. Even though I was not won over by Spider-Man 2, I do think it is better at tackling this theme. I think it is because Spider-Man 2 takes this more serious than the overtly jokey Far From Home. That joke extends to Holland's performance, where he is dead-set on convincing me that Peter Parker is a moron, forever afraid of talking to women, reacting to silly situations and being completely clueless on everything save mimicking Stark's technical abilities.

To be fair, at least they changed his "REALLY OLD MOVIE" bit to now misidentifying music. As "Mr. Hogan" (Peter stubbornly insists on addressing every adult as such) plays Back in Black, Peter perks up. "I love Led Zeppelin," he announces. Can't wait for him to go on about "THAT REALLY OLD SINGER, BIGGIE SMALLS" in Spider-Man: You Can't Go Home Again.

The more I watched Far From Home, the more I began to genuinely believe this film was made for four-year-olds.

I just don't care. I just don't care.

Next Marvel Cinematic Universe Film: Black Widow

DECISION: D-

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. A Review (Review #1150)

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

I wish my late friend Fidel Gomez, Jr. were here for a variety of reasons. One of them is that he would give his views on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as he would probably not go into it willingly. He always complained that Miles Morales should have been fully Hispanic rather than half-Hispanic, feeling that there was no need to NOT have a totally Hispanic hero.

As a digression, he felt the same about how Green Lantern Kyle Rayner later discovered he too was half-Hispanic. Fidel's major complaint was 'why couldn't he have started out as Hispanic to begin with?'

Spider-Man has always been the superhero closest to my heart, and I'm very protective of him. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does justice to the genre, with a mix of beautiful animation, a surprisingly logical story given its multidimensional nature and characters I found myself caring about.

Even Spider-Ham.

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is a Brooklyn kid who likes to do graffiti art and admires his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) more than his straight-arrow policeman father Jeff Davis (Bryan Tyree Henry).

At this juncture I would like to say that I'm a bit confused as to why Miles apparently uses his mother's surname versus his father's, though perhaps being named 'Miles Davis' might be a bit too much, but I digress.

Miles, rather reluctantly, is sent to an elite New York City school, cutting him off from his Brooklyn roots. He has the smarts, just not the desire. His interest is piqued by a pretty new student, but he does not have the smooth moves yet to try much of anything.

He does love Spider-Man (Chris Pine), and to his total shock he finds that a spider has bitten him too while spending time with Uncle Aaron. Soon, it becomes clear that this was no ordinary spider, but being a kid, Miles has no idea how to handle his new powers.

Circumstances not only force Miles to take up the mantle of 'Spider-Man' but also face off against Kingpin (Liev Schreiber).

Kingpin has set into motion the collapse of various multi-verses that end up bringing a variety of Spider-Men into Miles' universe. That included Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), a more disheveled version of our Peter Parker, Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), who has been masquerading as 'Gwen Stacy', the girl that piqued Miles' interest, Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), an anime-type figure, Spider-Noir (Nicolas Cage), a Spider-Man from a film noir dimension, and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), from a cartoon-like world where his name is "Peter Porker".

All these various Spider-people join forces to stop Kingpin from bringing all the various dimensions in one place (Miles' universe) and get back to their own universes. More often than not, they freeze Miles out as he has both the least experience and is just a kid. Only Peter B. Parker thinks he has potential but is constantly overruled.

Eventually though, after some twists and turns and more personal losses for Miles, he steps up to be the hero he needs to be.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is fully aware of what it is, and rather than try and deny its comic-book roots it instead embraces them. From the multiple panels and on-screen text to its jokey manner, Into the Spider-Verse is not afraid to have a few knowing jokes.

We start with an oddball acknowledgement of the various versions that have come already, down to the infamous dance number in Spider-Man 3 when then-Spidey Tobey Maguire went 'emo' and ended up looking foolish. The various winks and nods to the previous Spider-Man mythos liven up the story.

We also see the film awash in beautiful, bright colors. The film also takes a wide variety of animation styles from television cartoons to anime to noir and integrates them beautifully. There are times that the film almost looks like there was live-action.

Each Spider-Man is given his/her own style, and the film keeps to their unique styles. Given that we have a cavalcade of Spideys we can accept the colliding styles and more important to me, the issue involving Miles' Peter Parker did not upset me as much as it did when I was watching.

As a side note, in many ways as we the tongue-in-cheek manner we are (repeatedly) introduced to the multiple Spider-beings, we see they did keep to a pattern of sorts: the loss of someone important, the difficultly they endured, and the desire to return to their own universes.  Miles, sadly, would not be the exception.

The voice work is brilliant. Moore's Miles Morales (keeping to the alliteration of 'Peter Parker') makes Miles the somewhat insecure young man attempting to discover himself with his new powers. Jake Johnson, someone who needs to do more work in film, makes his Peter B. Parker into a regretful man who finds himself the unlikely mentor, balancing humor with heart.

Steinfeld has focused more on her pop music career of late, but her Gwen was wonderful and a badly needed positive role model for young girls. Cage is pretty much unrecognizable as Spider-Noir but it's a nice surprise.

The cast also has a great script to work with, where you don't sense any of the multiple Spideys getting short-changed, though I figure there was some of that. You might have the issue of making Kingpin more sympathetic, but it does give you a reason behind his villainy. You even have wild twists with Doc Ock and Prowler.

You also have a nice send-off for the late Stan Lee, who keeps his cameo in the film. His first line, "I'm going to miss him," could also apply to this much-loved figure.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has both a lush look and witty yet heartfelt story that has you care about the characters and their situations. It is a fun film that also hits you emotionally and is a delight from beginning to post-credit end.

DECISION: A-

Venom: A Review

VENOM

Venom, in my view, has been unfairly trashed by my fellow reviewers/critics. It is not the disaster many of them insist it is. In fact, many people in the audience seemed to love it, at least based on the number of times they burst out laughing.

Then again, Venom did not, as far as I know, set out to be a comedy even if it did end up playing as almost a spoof of comic book-based films than a serious franchise starter.

Crusading reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) has a beautiful fiancée, successful attorney Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) and a successful television show where he takes on the rich and powerful. At the top of his hit-list is Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), whom he has a disdain for, though I wasn't sure exactly what for.

Brock's editor gives him the plumb assignment of doing a live interview Drake, the head of the Life Foundation, a group doing scientific research into curing cancers. Brock ambushed Drake on allegations of wrongdoing based on information Brock got from an email that he read, an email sent to and meant for Anne's eyes only but which Brock decided to read anyway.

For some reason, Brock not only got fired but Anne dumps him after she herself is fired for his actions.

If only Brock knew just how nefarious Drake is. His spaceships have brought back otherworldly beings he believes can give humans the ability to live in space by having them essentially share their bodies.

Boy, when you write this down, it reads nuttier than it sounds.

Anyway, Drake decides that these symbiotes should be tested on humans, so he has his goons round up the homeless of San Francisco. One of those includes Brock's friend, as he himself is on the skids. Little do they know that one of those symbiotes brought back from outer space is wreaking havoc in Malaysia and is headed towards San Fran.

Brock, with the insider help of Dr. Skirth (Jenny Slate) breaks into the Life Foundation and while failing to save his friend does manage to get infected. Eventually, this being, who calls himself 'Venom', has joined with Brock.

Venom gives Brock enormous physical strength and power, but it also makes him act irrationally and keeps a running dialogue with Brock. And it can also kill him slowly.

Once Drake finds that Brock and his symbiote have joined so well, he is determined to get them both for his own nefarious plans. However, Drake himself gets infected and becomes 'Riot'. Riot wants to bring an invasion force of his fellow symbiotes to take over the world, and Venom, now finding that he likes it here where he won't be, in his words, "a loser" like he was in his own world, joins fellow loser Brock to save the world.

Unbeknown to Anne or anyone else, Venom is still within Brock, only they seem to have come to an understanding about when and where 'Venom' will come out.

We get a mid-credit scene where Brock goes to interview a mysterious figure in San Quentin (Woody Harrelson in a fright wig) who promises to unleash 'Carnage' and a post-credit scene where we see a scene from the upcoming Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Venom may end up getting a sequel, which I figure is the plan. Heaven Help Us All if they do make another one in the same vein as this one, for Venom is so unintentionally silly, haphazard and at times shockingly inept given the resources I figure it must have had.

I think the major problem with Venom is tone, and that has nothing to do with its PG-13 ratings. As a side note, I think the decision to tone down the violent nature of Venom was done more to bring in kids than for any actual story reasons. That is a very odd decision given that many parents happily took their children to the very R-rated Deadpool and we still had some surprising moments of gore.

At the center of the myriad of problems is Tom Hardy. Now, I confess to being one of the few people who has never been impressed with Hardy and who does not think he's one of our great actors. He strikes me as perpetually pissed-off about something, the time of man who would be in a bad mood if it was a sunny day.

As such, Venom seems so wildly out-of-tune when it has Hardy try for some kind of romantic comedy acting. It does not help that Hardy sounds like The Waterboy's Bobby Boucher. It seems almost laughable that someone so muscular could be so bumbling and timid.

Many moments where Hardy and company are asked to play things serious or menacing just made the audience break out into laughter. The lowest point is when Brock looks in a mirror and catches a quick glimpse of Venom. He lets out a Homer Simpson-like scream and crashes into the bathtub.

Not that him being frenetic and jumping into a lobster tank didn't make things already unintentionally hilarious.

There is a lot in Venom that will make one start laughing when you are not supposed to. There's the aforementioned Hardy-As-Adam Sandler act. There's the oddball running dialogue between Venom and Brock that almost comes straight out of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin film All of Me. There is the Malaysian zombie-types that look like an impersonation of Men in Black's Vincent D'Onofrio.

You can imagine that Hardy, growly and muscular as he is, would be a perfect Venom. He would be if he were playing Venom, but for most of Venom he plays this slightly bumbling semi-comic character more suited for a romantic comedy than an action film with an monstrous antihero.

Not all the blame can fall to Hardy though. He's saddled with some awful dialogue that sounds as if it were written by teenage boys than actual adults. At one point, Venom is offering Eddie Brock romantic advise on how to deal with Anne. At another point, he refers to both of them as 'losers' and when Brock takes the elevator rather than jump out the window, 'Venom' shouts "PU**Y!"

Funny moments in an action film is one thing. Being almost idiotic to get them is another.

Williams is one of our finest actresses, so she either was slumming it in Venom or just decided she needed to take a rest while getting a check because she was simply not engaged in the proceedings. Ahmed was almost too calm, his motives muddled and his character too contradictory to be believable. On one hand, he is very nice with children and on the other he's casually killing people.

Apart from all the performances which were pretty bad (though in fairness the script gave them very little to work with), the effects were shockingly bad. At more points than I care to remember it looked that Hardy was in front of a green-screen more reminiscent of films from the 1940s than those with computer generated imagery.

The actions scenes themselves were also confused and jumbled, making things hard to follow as to who was who and where things were going.

Venom is not a disaster if by disaster you mean a film that you will loath. I did not loath Venom only because I found you cannot help laughing at how so much went wildly wrong.

Curiously, Spidey is the one who saves Venom in the form of the beautiful scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at the end. 

Venom is Hardy There.

DECISION: D-