Rate Spider-Man Homecoming

Keaton was great. ... He's obviously having a ball just hamming it up (within limits--he's not chewing the scenery, but he's equally not taking everything completely seriously), and it's great fun to watch him on-screen. With that said, he has fewer opportunities than I expected, and it seems to me that the picture didn't make the most of the asset it had in Keaton.

Tom Holland was very good as Peter Parker, and he feels like a genuine high-schooler rather than an actor playing a high-schooler, which I appreciated. ... He may even be the best Spider Man of them all, though I still think the Raimi-Maguire films are superior. Either way, he's far superior to the rather dull Andrew Garfield. (Spider Man: Homecoming managed to avoid nearly everything I that I thought wrong with The Amazing Spider-Man.)

Speaking of the homecoming scene--that's a neat little twist, well-clued (or, least, prepared-for), and one that is rooted deeply in the characters themselves, as the best twists are. It's not exactly a "twist," perhaps, as it's something that some of the characters know but that, for obvious reasons, Peter and the audience do not. The scene in which Keaton figures it all out in the car is a great little suspense sequence. ... I loved that personal, small-scale nature, as I'm sick of these repeated "save the world/throw in another explosion/say another phony one-liner" plots. ...

... I frequently decry "realism" in these movies, but the difference is that SMH is genuinely real, dealing with high-school kids' emotions, and not "real" in the popular conception of wallowing in gloom and despair (as something like the execrable Man of Steel did).

I have a few criticisms, mostly involving the second half, which turned into more or less typical "superheroics," complete with my old bête noire, big explosions. Keaton's villain becomes much less interesting (he's at his most interesting when he's out of the costume), and stuff just blows up without the intelligent direction and editing of earlier action sequences (the elevator in the Washington Monument, the Staten Island Ferry). Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man is Spidey's mentor, which... This version of Spidey needs a mentor (Uncle Ben, where are ya?), but Downey is typically irritating and self-centered, aspects which I think only the first Iron Man flick managed to assuage. I was delighted when Downey took the fancy costume away from Holland, thereby forcing Spidey to rely on himself. And, whatever one's politics, the girl who mouths modern liberal platitudes at the Washington Monument, who ends up receiving unnecessary screen time, is unbelievably annoying and shoehorned in.

Still, it's a lot of fun, and I'm happy I watched it. ... In the New York Post, critic Sara Stewart called it "...an endearingly awkward kid brother to the glamorous Wonder Woman," something with which I'd have to agree; both films have a sincere sense of fun and are both surprisingly similar in their beats, performances, stories, and action-sequences and probably inspired by what I consider the best superhero movie of them all, Donner's Superman. In the end, as stated, I'm very happy I finally took a look at this movie. I certainly enjoyed it.