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Spider-Man: Far from Home

(4 popcorn boxes)

  Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He doesn’t want or need any more super hero status than that. In fact, he’s going on his school science trip to Venice, Italy and he isn’t even taking his spider suit. As you can guess, things go downhill from there.

  After Avengers: Endgame, Peter is trying to deal with the loss of his mentor, Tony Stark and the hole that loss left in his life.

 Soon after arriving in Venice for his school trip, his “time off” is in jeopardy as he meets Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), a super soldier from another dimension who is tracking and fighting evil elementals that have arrived on Earth to cause mayhem and destruction. That can ruin a school trip real quick.

  But that also means awesome action and web-slinging and swinging around buildings from webs… very cool. And Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Capt. Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) are there! I really like Hill, she needs to be in more Marvel films.

  As usual, I am hampered by not telling you too much of the story while at the same time convincing you this is a good story. Sometimes we need to be reminded that Peter Parker is just a high school teenager and he makes teenager mistakes and teenager decisions. Those decisions will haunt him for a while.

  The action, pace and angst are well done by director Jon Watts (he also directed Spider-Man: Homecoming) and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers – plus Stan Lee and Steve Ditko of course. The CGI action and special effects are superb. You’ll pay for your whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge.

  I give Spider-Man: Far from Home four boxes out of five. Others have said it is a perfect movie, but I did find a few small issues. For instance, one of my least favorite plot devices is the “villain” in a long-winded soliloquy explaining why he and his henchmen are killing innocent people. Sometimes that is effective, but this time it ended up more like “he took my lunch in the break room even though it had my name on it”. Very soap opera-ish.

  But overall, this is a can’t miss film in the Marvel Comic Universe. Tom Holland is perfect as Peter Parker (take that with a grain of salt, I said the same about Tobey Maguire). The humor, the sadness, the adventure and the superheroes were excellent entertainment and I hope you find time in your busy summer schedule to relax in the airconditioned theater, munch on some popcorn or Junior Mints and spend time with your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This film is rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence and some suggestive comments.

  Check this week’s issue of the Frankenmuth News for a complete listing of shows and times.

MOVIE TRIVIA

      Marissa Tomei is back as Peter’s Aunt May. Though she receives a lot of flack for her Oscar-winning performance in My Cousin Vinny, I think she’s great. I even thought so way back in the early 1980s when she was on this classic soap opera.

LAST WEEK’S MOVIE TRIVIA

  Emma Thompson appears as high-ranking Agent O in this film. My favorite Thompson movies are Love Actually, Sense and Sensibility and Harry Potter, of course. She won an Academy Award for this 1992 film. Howards End.