Spider-Man: Far from Home a fun, breezy European holiday

Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Far from Home. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Spider-Man: Far from Home's biggest success is simply not dropping the ball following one of the biggest movies of all time. It's breezy and funny, pretty well written with an inspired villain for the young webslinger to tangle against. Yet it still feels slightly hollow in comparison to the gravitas of the film preceding it in the Marvel franchise and the excellent Spider-Man movie that came out just six months prior. Good is a fine thing for any movie to be – many movies aspire to meet that expectation – but Far from Home would rather be good than aspire for greatness.

Months after the events of Avengers: End Game, Far from Home shows what has happened to the world following the Hulk's un-snapping (called the blip in this movie). Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is forced to start the school year over again with his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), his crush MJ (Zendaya), Ned's new girlfriend Betty (Angourie Rice), the hunky Brad Davis (Remy Hii), and the disgustingly wealthy Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori). As they travel to Europe on a class trip, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) recruits Peter to fight alongside the peculiar Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) to stop the final Elemental monster from destroying the world. As Peter battles an unknown villain, he grapples with his feelings for MJ, the budding romance between Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), and his doubts that he is qualified to replace Iron Man.

In terms of character development giving Spider-Man an epic case of self doubt makes sense. Despite battling Thanos and traveling through space, Spider-Man hasn't really proven himself against a large-scale villain. He's still just a kid from New York, more accustomed to fighting muggers and thieves and the parents of his crushes instead of world-destroying monsters. Add in the pressure of replacing Iron Man (and to a degree Captain America) and it produces a kid who really just wants to be on vacation and be honest with his crush. Spider-Man's battle is as much against the villains as it is against himself as he searches for his true self, and it's a narrative the film does well to mine to differentiate this Peter Parker from previous iterations.

 

Truth though is a hard thing to find in Far from Home. The film dedicates ample time to exploring the subject both in Peter's dive into his inner truth and the loss of a true reality for people to grab onto. Nothing in this movie is as it seems, and it becomes more and more difficult to parse out the real from the manufactured. As one character references as the film ends, the people will believe what they want them to believe because they control the narrative. Endless points about the modern state of media and the inability to believe the narrators can be tossed right in here, but for the film it's a pretty clever way of building suspense and giving Spider-Man a new sort of villain to fight. This also contrasts nicely to Spider-Man's inherent decency. His first instinct is to believe in sincerity; a villain that takes advantage of that is one capable of rocking Spider-Man's worldview.

The film's psychology is far more interesting than the action sequences. Far from Home doesn't get a lot of traction from the fight scenes with the Elementals, as the choreography is mundane and shot with little craft or care. The villain is a part of the issue on this – the villain isn't much of a fighter – which leaves few if any opportunities for Spider-Man to brawl. This should be the character's specialty, as the webs are designed to bring the fight to him and not as a projectile to launch like Thor's lightning or even Captain America's shield. The film went for big on its action sequences, but exchanging practicality for grandiosity does the character a disservice. The movie would be far more satisfying if Spider-Man could just punch a guy every now and then.

Admittedly the film's greatest failing is one that can't be helped – being released six months after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Far from Home just can't compare to the brilliance of Into the Spider-Verse, and it feels a bit lacking as a film because audiences have already seen a better, more interesting portrayal of this character. The comparison isn't completely off base – Far from Home references and gently mocks the premise for Into the Spider-Verse, which isn't a favorable look for the former film. Far from Home is a little underwhelming, which fits a franchise about trying to live up to expectations. 

 

There's still a lot to like about Far from Home. Portraying MJ as a smart, morbid, awkward teen is a smart reinvention for the character fitting both the actress and the tone of the film. The breezy tone is a nice shift following End Game, a nice treat after the three-hour marathon of the last Avengers movie. Far from Home is the walk-off double in the bottom of the ninth; it's not quite a home run, but it's more than enough to win the game.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

 

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 129 minutes

Genre: Action

tl;dr

What Worked: Humor, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya

What Fell Short: Action Sequences, Length

What To Watch As Well: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming

'Nice Guys' in name only

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe star in "The Nice Guys." Image courtesy Warner Bros.

The cruelest part of “The Nice Guys” is, after almost two hours of blood, sex and death, all of the chaos on screen never actually means anything. It's director/co-writer Shane Black's greatest joke in a film loaded with great gallows humor and pain, that the borderline heroics of two schlubs in well over their heads results in no change to the world around them. Their success leads directly to failure and the loss of several lives of varying levels of innocence along the way.

It's a fitting coda to a story based in 1970s Los Angeles yet rooted in detective stories like “The Big Sleep,” in which the plot is as logical as an 8 year old's Hot Wheels track. Nothing is quite as it seems from the get go, starting with the chosen career paths of bruiser Jackson Healy (a very bulky Russell Crowe) and private eye Holland March (Ryan Gosling). The former, who proclaims himself to be something of a vagabond searching for meaning in life, has the fists of a fighter but the nose of a gumshoe, while the latter is an alcoholic loser whose source of income entails taking money from elderly women for easily solvable cases. What kind of shenanigans can ensue when these two wacky characters meet for the first time? Technically the first encounter entails a broken arm granted to Gosling's Holland by Crowe's Healy, but the second meeting serves as the start of a very dangerous business relationship complete with goons (Keith David, Matt Bomer and Beau Knapp), a steely government official (Kim Basinger) and her assistant (Yaya DaCosta), and a mysterious girl named Amelia (Margaret Qualley) at the center of all the mayhem.

It's a very old school approach to a film that very much lives in its setting, coupling the grittiness of the streets with the rise of porn as a legitimate force in the entertainment industry and the slowly but surely declining Detroit automakers. The combination results in a pitch perfect milieu for a good detective film, with the dirt and flash representing the conflict between the lifestyles lived by the investigators and the people they're involved with. “The Nice Guys” doesn't view those as mirror images; instead, they're effectively depicted as forces drawing money in theoretically sinful fashions. In Black's view, it's the porn industry that's noble, or at least the career with the potential to change the world, sharing the spirit for betterment possessed by the film’s twenty somethings. It's that sense of trying to do something that leads Holland and Jackson to enter themselves into the arrangement in the first place. Crowe's Jackson aspires to recapture the feeling he had when he broke up a robbery a few months prior; Gosling's Holland wants some semblance of happiness and to show his daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) he is at least moderately competent at his job.

But good intentions can lead to hellish places, especially with characters like these two who lack the qualifications to make their dreams come true. Jackson's moment in the sun is tainted, unwittingly to him, by an epic bout of vengeance he wrought, whilst Holland is too drunk and too much of a loser to follow his ambitions on his own accord. They might be the titular nice guys, but the title itself is something of a joke too; a label like “nice guy” means very little when its ascribed to people like Holland and Jackson. That's why the heart and soul of “The Nice Guys” belongs to Rice's Holly, who serves as the Penny to the Holland/Jackson Inspector Gadget. She's often the smartest person in the room, a very courageous character who fights with her wits and with a little luck on her side. Neither Jackson nor Holland could fulfill their spiritual quests without her presence; they advance somewhat as people because she's around to take care of them. The concept is a little reductive considering how often such roles are filled by women, yet it is effective in large part because of Rice's performance.

Then again, none of this is shown to matter at the end. Whatever personal improvements the eponymous nice guys make is curbed by a world actively acting against their best intentions. It's a cosmic joke, darker than the rest of the black comedy Black puts on display in the movie. Yet it is necessary though to serve as an exclamation mark for Black's ultimate point with “The Nice Guys”; one's advancement in life is never enough to change the world.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 116 minutes

Genre: Action Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Audiences down for some retro action and watching a burly Russell Crowe punch people.

Take the whole family?: It has the right mixture of violence, nudity and inappropriate language to deserve the “R” rating.

Theater or Netflix?: It's good enough to merit an excursion, but not vital to see on a big screen.

Do Crowe and Ryan Gosling work as comedic actors?: For two guys without extensive backgrounds in comedic acting, they do pretty well for themselves. Crowe works within his limitations for the most part – effectively punching and acting a little slow and very gruff – but Gosling exhibits a penchant for pulling off a pretty good pratfall.

Watch this as well?: Shane Black dipped into a similar detective story/blend of dark humor with his directorial debut “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Along with Black's material are two films by acclaimed writer/director Martin McDonagh that are dark, violent and very often hilarious: “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths.”