An innovative animated adventure

Ever since Sam Raimi revitalised this webslinging superhero saga back in 2002, there has been live-action film after live-action film featuring Spider-Man. So you can be forgiven for wondering if we really need another Spidey adventure.

This, though, is the first animated version of the longrunning franchise. And it fea- tures not one, not two, but six Spider-people working together against a common enemy? Does it work? The answer to that is a somewhat guarded, yes. The premise is a little gimmicky. The protagonist, a student (dubbed by Shameik Moore) who possesses the same powers as Spider-Man, conveniently turns out to be half African-American and half Puerto-Rican. An older, more cynical Peter Parker, the original SpiderMan (Jake Johnson), must work with him, a SpiderWoman (Hailee Steinfeld) and a Japanese-American mechanical wizard named Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn). As well as the two most inspired additions — SpiderMan Noir (voiced by the evereclectic Nicholas Cage) and Spider-Ham aka Peter Porker (John Mulaney).

Denizens of other dimensions, the sextet must unite to foil the plans of Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), the primary villain. The film’s strength derives from its colourful visuals, a deft blend of oldschool hand-drawn illustrations and innovative computer-generated animation stylings. A visit to …Spider-Verse is recommended.