IT’S SPIDEY THE HIGH SCHOOL SUPERHERO
This is more like it, Marvel! The tone is less portentously galactic than usual: think harryPotter-meets-James Bond, with Tom holland as a frankly adorable young spidey for us Mums to coo over (secretly, of course) while teenagers identify with anxious passion as he stumbles through puberty.
Even his foe is quite cosy: Michael Keaton as a smalltime scrap merchant who turns to the dark side when his contract is cancelled by a bossy official.
he starts selling criminals alien techno-weapons from the Age of Ultron business, and builds a rickety-looking giant flying mechanical crow called The Vulture to get around in.
Meanwhile Peter Parker, proud to be an intern for The Avengers at 15, is equally worried about his awkwardness talking to girls and his detention record.
The sight of him struggling into his ridiculous stretchy suit and hood is endearing, like any shy lad getting the wrong sleeve in the changingroom: only his occasional flying somersaults raise suspicion when he’s in civvies.
WHEN his geeky stout friend ned ( Jacob Batalon), does discover his secret spiderman identity he mainly asks embarrassing questions like ‘do you lay eggs’? Poor spidey blushes.
indeed for all the CGi-jinks (well up to standard) this is as much a high-school movie as classic superhero stuff.
The Vulture swoops around spectacularly and engages in a final vast aerial battle with our hero, the staten island Ferry gets sliced in half lengthways and strenuously and not entirely effectively sewn together by super-silk, and our hero takes a physical bashing while rescuing people from the Washington Monument lift.
But it’s the kid’s emotional journey which holds it together. When Peter falls in love he has to face the tricky fact that his prom-date’s father has a dark side; when he’s told off by iron Man and loses his internship he burns with shame; and like any kid he still quite likes building Deathstar models on the bedroom floor with ned.
he does not see that among his schoolmates the clever Michelle (Zendaya) would be a far better bet for him than the villain’s daughter. Michelle indeed gets some killer