Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

IMDB Rating : 8.1/10 (as on  15.07.2017)

PG-13 | 2h 13min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Peter Parker, with the help of his mentor Tony Stark, tries to balance his life as an ordinary high school student in New York City while fighting crime as his superhero alter ego Spider-Man when a new threat emerges.

Director: Jon Watts

Writers: Jonathan Goldstein (screenplay), John Francis Daley (screenplay)

Stars: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr. 

IMDB link Here

'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Is The Best Marvel Film In Years

Dani Di Placido   

In Homecoming, the Marvel universe finally feels alive. I like to criticize Marvel for being overly formulaic, but their recent efforts prove that they’re putting real thought into the wider implications of their interconnected mega-franchise. Homecoming begins during the cleanup of the invasion of New York that took place in during The Avengers, asking the question; what happened to all those broken pieces of alien tech lying around the city? As Civil War proved, considering the consequences of these apocalyptic battles is so much more interesting than just moving on to the next city-destroying set piece.

Peter Parker grew up during the aftermath of the New York attack, and naturally, he’s an Avengers fanboy, a gifted high-schooler desperate to join the legendary superhero team, like a young musician who yearns to become a celebrity. His fellow classmates are busy debating which Avenger is hotter, Captain America stars in embarrassing educational videos; after years of careful world-building, this universe feels real.

Iron Man plays a vital role, but he is used with admirable restraint. His presence is really felt offscreen; this is Spider-Man’s story, not Avengers-lite. That being said, the awkward father/son dynamic between the two heroes is hilarious, and persistent rumors that Downey Jr. is going to walk away soon make me sad. This crazy world of magic and weird science is going to feel pretty empty without him.

But Homecoming has enough colorful personalities to stand on its own. Peter’s best friend is a superhero fanboy who practically speaks for the audience. Aunt May has evolved from a helpless old lady into the sexy, sassy Marisa Tomei, a character who Peter can actually relate to rather than spending his life hiding from.

There’s far more of an emphasis on comedy, and on character, than the majority of the superhero fare out there. Peter’s high school struggles feel more weighty than his crime-fighting, and that’s exactly the way it should be. 

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is excitable and starry-eyed, not quite the loser Maguire was, not the witty, confident Garfield, but a boy on the cusp of manhood. Refreshingly, his nighttime patrol is depicted as dull, his role as superhero a dream rather than concrete reality. It’s really hard to just walk down the street and see a felony occur before your very eyes, and Spider-Man has trouble tracking serious crime down. Until him and Michael Keaton’s Vulture cross paths, Spider-Man isn’t really needed in this city of heroes.

Simply put, Homecoming is the best Spider-Man film in years, on par with the sacred Spider-Man 2, in my opinion. Marvel has certainly proved that Spider-Man is safe in their hands. A couple of interesting twists at the end of the film indicate that Marvel is planning to take their Spider-Man down an unfamiliar path, the only direction to take a character so wildly overused. The idea that he may eventually crawl back into Sony’s arms is nothing short of a travesty. Please, Marvel, keep Spider-Man, and never let him ago.

But whatever you do, don’t reboot him again.

Read full review at Forbes

Movie Rating ★★★☆☆  

Weak webslinger

Wendy Ide  

Even diehard comic-book movie fans must have noticed by now the glitch in the Avengers universe. Whatever algorithm is used to calculate the perfect ratio of self-satisfied banter to bludgeoning FX has resulted in ever-decreasing variations on a theme. If not quite the same movie, they recycle the same plot points and devices, the same blustering displays of CGI muscle. Deep within the Marvel laboratories, it seems genetic experiments have been taking place as the DNA of the comic-book action flick is spliced with that of other films. Spider-Man: Homecoming is the labradoodle of this cross-genre breeding programme. Part superhero movie, part high-school coming-of-age story, it’s bouncy, likable and completely devoid of threat.

A deft reveal on the night of the school dance links Peter’s two parallel lives together; but the action climax that follows – a battle fought on the outside of a camouflaged Stark Industries transport plane – is an onslaught of effects so confusing that you forget to worry about the outcome.

Read full review at The Guardian

Movie Rating ★★☆☆☆  

 The web-slinger's gizmo-heavy John Hughes homage is too cobwebby for comfort

Robbie Collin

The big, and theoretically cute, idea behind it is that Peter Parker – now played by the young British actor Tom Holland as a 15-year-old high schooler – has to balance his super-heroic duties with the more prosaic traumas of everyday teenage life. But the film’s action parts are staged with so little nerve or showmanship, and the coming-of-age ones so feebly emulsified from high-school comedies past, that you end up wondering if the two halves were assembled by different teams of genre specialists who somehow ended up with each other’s commissions by mistake.

Certainly, neither seems like a forte for director Jon Watts (Cop Car), the latest green-behind-the-ears Sundance type to have been handed the keys to a blockbuster along with, presumably, a stern warning from the owners to bring her back before dark with a full tank and scratch-free paintwork.

It’s a strategy that can pay dividends when the filmmaker in question is capable of crowbarring something of their own personality and predilections into the project – David Lowery’s plaintive, homespun Pete’s Dragon remake and Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ brash and rompy Kong: Skull Island are two notable recent successes on that front. But there’s a stale-biscuit whiff of the focus group about this new Spider-Man: for a start, there’s nothing here to remotely bewilder or appall anyone in their 30s or above, which for a high-school film is a dereliction of duty.

Still, Holland makes a valiant go of it. At a baby-faced 21, the actor is the youngest of the three recent live-action Spider-Men by some distance, and the gawky buoyancy he brought to Civil War’s centrepiece battle makes its welcome return in Homecoming’s opening collage of smartphone video clips – shot by Peter as a kind of behind-the-scenes diary during the events of that film, and featuring the first of a handful of guest appearances from Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man. (As a licensing-rights-bending co-production between Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios, Homecoming officially ushers Spider-Man into the same cinematic universe as the Avengers.)

It’s this genuinely charming sequence, rather than yet another do-over of the radioactive spider-bite, which sets the tone for what follows – along with a slapdash pre-credits introduction of the nemesis du jour, a blue-collar entrepreneur turned jet-pack-toting arms dealer called Adrian Toomes (an admirably engaged Michael Keaton), who will later become known as The Vulture.

But the film’s determination to fudge its scene-setting duties and get down to the business at hand feels less cheeky when you work out what that business actually is. The thrust of Homecoming turns out to be a series of superhero-themed variations on the old torn loyalties dilemma from countless high-school movies past, in which the big dance contest (or something) turns out to be on the same day as the final exam (or something else).

Paying homage is one thing, but for all his supposed new-found youthfulness, this Spider-Man can feel a little too cobwebby for comfort.

 Read full review at Telegraph

Homecoming Is One of the Best Superhero Movies in Years

CHRISTOPHER ORR  

Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, has just completed his first mission with the Avengers, and he’s eager for further adventures. But Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, thinks Peter could use a bit more seasoning—he’s only 15, after all—and encourages the boy to work on being a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” for a while before getting called back up to the Big Show. So he gives the kid the number for his security chief, Happy Hogan. Peter, needless to say, texts and calls—and then texts and calls some more—without response.

The movie opens with a mini-movie—really more of a video diary—by Peter himself, briefly recounting the character’s reintroduction as a temporary Avenger in Captain America: Civil War. (“No one has actually told me what I’m doing in Berlin,” he narrates to his smartphone. “Something about Captain America going crazy.”) But when it’s over, it’s over. And Peter, having had a taste of full-on superheroism, is back to being an ordinary, not terribly popular high-schooler in Queens.

Homecoming gets so many things right that it’s almost difficult to catalog them. For starters, there’s no origin story: no radioactive spider and Uncle Ben getting shot and “with great power comes great responsibility” speech and on and on. If you really don’t know how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, look up one of the earlier movies. Peter does still live with his Aunt May, but she’s been reconceived from an elderly widow to younger surrogate-mom played by a very good Marisa Tomei. (A less successful reconception involves Spidey’s gadget-laden suit, which even talks to him; Stark product or no, it can’t help but feel just a little too Iron Man-y.)

Clever gags are everywhere to be found, which is unsurprising given that the director, Jon Watts, and the many listed screenwriters have their principal roots in TV comedy. The movie’s title, Homecoming, technically refers to Peter’s high-school dance, but it’s foundationally a joke about Spider-Man at last joining the Marvel stable. Captain America’s Chris Evans makes a few cameos in Public Service Announcements on the importance of staying in shape and avoiding detention. (As the gym teacher who shows the first clip drily notes, “I’m pretty sure this guy is a war criminal now.”) High-school girls play “Marry, F***, Kill” with members of the Avengers, and there are witty bits involving the difficulty of webslinging in the suburbs (not enough tall buildings to swing from), Stark’s marital reticence, what comes after “screwing the pooch,” and the iconic upside-down kiss from the 2002 Spider-Man. There’s even a (sort of) invisible jet to make up for the one that went missing from Wonder Woman.

But in the end, it comes down to Marvel’s deep reverence for character, and the studio’s understanding that every superhero is different. After the extraterrestrial meanderings of the Guardians of the Galaxy and the save-the-world mandates of the Avengers—to say nothing of the grim offerings served up by DC Comics pre-Wonder Woman—it feels like just the right time for a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. Hey! Ho! Let’s go!

Read full review at The atlantic