‘HOMECOMING’ KING
Holland breaks through as ‘Spider-Man’ despite plot failings
Yet another attempt by Sony Pictures to make a decent “SpiderMan” movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is more fun than the last ones, yes, but not great. “Homecoming” is the second Sony reboot attempt after Marc Webb’s “The Amazing SpiderMan” (2012) and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014) with Brit Andrew Garfield. This new attempt was directed by Jon Watts, whose previous credit is the modest 2015 road thriller “Cop Car.” Why “Spider-Man: Homecoming” required the efforts of eight credited screenwriters is beyond me. The film has both too much and not enough plot. In this installment, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man (Brit Tom Holland in a breakout performance), is a shy 15-year-old New York City high school sophomore/ superhero/nerd with a crush on senior classmate Liz (Laura Harrier), who competes with him on the school’s academic decathlon team. Set two months after the events of the endlessly dull “Captain America: Civil War,” “Homecoming” takes place in Spidey’s New York City (he’s from Queens) and gets a big assist from Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, who appears as orphan Spidey’s superhero-confidantecum-surrogate father figure. Peter, whose superpowers are convincingly hormonal, lives with his very attractive Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), who casts a spell over every man she meets.
Local criminal Adrian Toomes (a great Michael Keaton), a man with a violent temper and a super-cool, winged robot suit (Keaton trades Birdman for Vulture), has gotten his hands on alien technology and with the aid of a tech nerd crew member has turned it into weapons he sells on the black market. Peter Parker’s best friend is fellow “loser” Ned (the talented Jacob Batalon), a video gamer and computer and “Star Wars” nerd, and their interaction helps pass the time while other things happen.
Scenes in which Spider-Man talks with his Tony Stark-designed superhero
suit's version of Siri are as labored as those of Spidey being dragged by a van and slammed into stationary objects (a tree, a mailbox, the screenplay, etc.) by one of Toomes' henchmen. An action sequence involving the Washington Monument is a bit of a time-filling dud. But Spidey's try-try-again attitude wins you over, and actor-director Jon Favreau is another asset as Happy Hogan, even if he is another character from “Iron Man.”
Question: Why does Gwyneth Paltrow get star billing for a Pepper Potts cameo that is two sentences and a quart and a half of bronzer? The Ramones deserve more thanks than she does for the repeated use of the their galvanizing punk classic “Blitzkrieg Bop.”
I'd like lot less trivia about comic book “universes” and Easter eggs and better Marvel movies. But that seems nearly impossible. A sequence involving the Staten Island Ferry is a relief from the usual 9/11-evoking urban destruction, and the new film's cast, including Holland, Harrier, Batalon and Zendaya as gloomy trickster Michelle, help make this work. Still, this “Homecoming” is as much ho-hum, as Hey ho, let's go.
(“Spider-Man: Homecoming” contains superhero violence and suggestive comments.)