I’m not a huge comic book/superhero movie kind of guy. I enjoyed the first three X-Men movies, the first Iron Man and the first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, but other than that I’m not very well-versed in this world.
But after seeing about 50 trailers for the latest Spidey installment – Spider-Man: Homecoming – and seeing its great reviews online (8.1 out of 10 on IMDB, 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), I decided I had to check it out to see what all the fuss was about.
The biggest thing I was curious about going in was the actor playing the lead role, Tom Holland. I saw his name on the movie’s IMDB page listed as Spider-Man and immediately asked myself, “Who is Tom Holland?” It turns out he’s 21 and has only been in a handful of movies, none of which I’d seen. I figured this couldn’t be a good sign – going to a summer blockbuster comic book movie without ever having heard of the lead actor before, but I figured it would make for a truly unbiased viewing experience, not expecting anything, good or bad, from this Holland guy.
Once I was in my seat at Regal 10 Concord and the movie started to play, it only took a couple of minutes to understand why Holland has not become a huge breakout name lately. He looked uncomfortable on the screen and seemed an odd choice to lead such a big movie.
Besides Holland, the rest of the acting was pretty good, with some big names such as Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Michael Keaton (Vulture), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan) and Marisa Tomei (Aunt May Parker) showing off their skills (though Tomei didn’t seem to put her heart into this one).
The biggest failings of Spider-Man: Homecoming surround the storyline. I know this is a superhero movie, but almost every plot point felt cliché and unsurprising.
The general premise is Peter Parker is a dorky high school kid who’s trying to strike a balance between being a normal teenager and a web-slinging, gravity-defying vigilante. The subtitle “Homecoming” refers to, you guessed it, a high school homecoming dance. I expected something a little more serious or heavy to be the crux of a superhero movie, but that’s just me.
The bulk of the film is predictable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not exciting and fun, too. I saw it in 3-D, which added another layer of entertainment, but it actually didn’t seem completely necessary for this movie. I would have enjoyed it just the same in standard two-dimensional format.
There’s plenty of train-hopping, building-leaping, fighting and destruction to keep most of you entertained, and there are some elements of humor throughout that keeps the mood fairly light.
But if you don’t like the use of deus ex machina – when a seemingly unsolvable problem suddenly becomes solved by something completely unexpected or unknown to the viewer – this one might annoy you. In the world of this movie – which is otherwise realistic – impossibly long odds are overcome and extraordinary coincidences abound, and it still takes more than two hours to resolve.
In the end, though, I didn’t really care. I walked out of there feeling like I enjoyed myself, even if I had some nits to pick about the story and the acting.
If you like lots of action (and especially if you’re a teenager yourself), you’ll have a couple hours of good, clean fun watching this.
