SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

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Marvel’s most popular superhero swings to ever greater heights in this wildly entertaining reboot. Despite being the sixth Spider-Man film since 2002 and featuring yet another actor under the mask, this exuberant blast of summer fun is the bestever Spider-Man film.

Winningly confident, exciting and funny, it’s a web of wisecracks, stunts and special effects, and is strung together by the gleeful performance of Brit actor Tom Holland.

After developing super powers when he was bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker is a high school nerd by day and Spider-Man at night. He fearlessly confronts criminals, yet is intimidated by the father of his date to the Homecoming prom.

Meanwhile, Michael Keaton has a lot of fun as a super-villain called The Vulture, much more than the actor ever did as Tim Burton’s Batman back in – gulp – 1989. The bad guy flies a set of mechanical wings created from the remnants of the alien attack on Earth seen in Marvel’s Avenger’s Assemble in 2012.

The script is faithful to the spirit of the comic but never slavish in attention to detail and gives a contemporary take on the character.

It’s all the better for being happy to introduce key characters late on, or dispense with them entirely. The tone owes a huge amount to the giddy vitality of the 1980s teen films of John Hughes, most notably Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is clearly referenced. Sony has long owned the Spider-Man film rights but not the rights to other heroes in the Marvel universe. This co-production with Marvel Studios is a “Homecoming” for Spider-Man as it allows him to become integrated into the adventures of other Marvel heroes, such as Captain America and Iron Man. This gives the web-slinger a much-needed fresh set of legs, and that of course is a whole lot of legs.