Film Review: Spider-Man - Far From Home

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable


Back in 1991 there was a movie called If Looks Could Kill whose lead was 21 Jump Street star Richard Grieco.  It was an action comedy about a teenage boy on his high school class trip to Europe who gets pulled into an espionage adventure.  And I could not help thinking of this terrible, terrible film all while in the theater seeing the movie in this review.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is like If Looks Could Kill only good.  And with Spider-Man.

I will en devour to avoid as many spoilers as possible for Avengers: Endgame below, but it is difficult to do because this film is a direct follow up to the fallout of that film.  So read the rest of the review at your own risk if you have not seen Endgame.

The story picks up almost a year after the events of Endgame.  Spider-Man aka Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is feeling a great deal of pressure to step up his super hero game and take a leading role in the Avengers.  But Peter desperatly wants to have a normal teenage life.  He wants to go on a school trip to Europe with his best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), ask out the girl he likes, MJ (Zendaya), while avoiding his emotional bully Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori).  Things at home are weird as Tony Starks body man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) has been getting very chummy with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei).  But despite trying to get into normal teen hijinks, he is recruited by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to help a new hero Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), who Peter's friends nickname "Mysterio," to take down elemental monsters that threaten to destroy the Earth.  

Probably the biggest deciding factor in whether or not you will like this movie will be how invested you are in all the teenage drama.  As a comic book geek, I can tell you that my favorite Spider-Man series were Ultimate Spider-Man (written by Brian Michael Bendis) and Mary Jane/ Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane (written by Sean McKeever).  Both of these comics focused on heavily on the interpersonal relationships the characters had and made them as compelling as an attack by the Green Goblin.  Far From Home takes a similar approach.  There are long stretches of the movie where Peter barely does any super-heroics.  If you find the focus on the relationships a distraction from the main story, then this movie is not for you.  Far From Home is a movie that uses the superheroics to explore the complexities of teen life.  And I am a sucker for those "will they/won't they" stories.

Because of this, the movie should feel uneven, but it doesn't.  Director Jon Watts blends to super-hero genre and teen road trip genre together incredibly well.  Because this is a Marvel movie, the special effects are always top-notch.  There is a "nightmare" sequence in the middle of the film that visually enveloping and feels like the kind of imaginative spectacle you would get in reading a comic book.  And since this is a roadtrip film, the European vistas make for great set pieces and palate cleanses between scenes.  The writing Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers is serviceable and at times funny.  But it never loses its sense of pleasantness.  Some of the jokes fly, others sink, but the characters are endearing enough to make you overlook most of the imperfections in the writing.  A particular highlight is watching Ned with his first girlfriend Betty Brant (Angourie Rice), who play up the comedic absurdity of most teen romances.

For those who are Spider-Man comic fans, Mysterio is a character who is well-known and the story elements use him in a way that would make the comic creators proud.  The movie wants to say something about how appearances can be deceiving and how shouldn't believe everything in the news and on the Internet, but it never pushes this point too hard.  And even though it focuses on the relationships, it doesn't reach the depths that Spider-Man: Homecoming hit.  Compared to that film, Far From Home is a little closer to superficial than to profound.  But that doesn't mean the movie wasn't thoroughly enjoyable.  This movie acts as a nice light desert after the heavy meal of Endgame.

I think Holland has now become my favorite onscreen Peter Parker.  Tobey MacGuire showed us a longer and wider arc to Peter's story, portraying him going from teen to full adult.  But Holland is doing a great job as teen.  He is in that no-man's-land of wanting the freedoms of adulthood without losing the joys of teen life.  Holland's Peter is often unfocused, hormonal, emotional, but he never loses the core of his heroism and dignity.  Zendaya eleveates MJ from being one-note.  She has enough charisma and charm to make MJ's bleak and woke persona something attractive.  The script does a disservice to the characters by simply stating that Peter has a crush on MJ rather than showing it develop, since that character point was nowhere in the last film.  Holland and Zendaya have very good chemistry.  They also milk the comedy of Peter being totally terrified by the girl he likes and her icy facade slowly melting by his warmth.  I also love the fact that they wrote their relationship with all the innocent awkwardness of young romance.  

Veterans like Tomei and Favreau lay on the comic relief while sprinkling it with genuine moments of heart and gravitas.  Martin Starr and JB Smoove have a nice banter as the school chaperones.  Batalon and Rice play off of each other nicely and drew most of the laughs in the theater where I saw the movie.  Jackson's performance was a little odd at first.  He plays Fury with bit more looseness than we have seen.  At first I thought it was simply the actor adapting to the tone of the movie, but by the end I understood the structure of his performance.  Gyllenhaal does a half-great job as Mysterio.  What I mean is that his performance feels fractured down the middle.  On one side is a wonderfully sincere and restrained performance of dignity.  On the other is wide-eyed scenery chewing.  I understand the choices made here, but he just misses the mark on making it work completely.

I love the fact that the movie explores that perennial question that the hero has to face: ordinary life or heroic life.  Both options are presented as morally acceptable.  I often think about how GK Chesterton reveled in the glory of ordinary life with a sense of wonder or who St. Terese of the Little Flower saw great sanctity in ordinariness.  And yet we have the saints like Paul or Joan of Arc who are called to do mighty deeds before the whole world.  Peter is constantly caught in this dilemma.  Does being a hero mean he has to sacrifice the ordinary happiness of other teens?  Maybe part of the point of these movies is that growing up isn't about choosing between the two but learning how to balance both.

Before I went to see Far From Home, I re-watched Homecoming and I remembered how much I enjoyed hanging out with these characters.  Far From Home gave me the opportunity to spend a couple of fun hours with them and I can't wait to do so again soon.