Spider-Man: Far From Home review: Tom Holland fills the Avengers void with a breezy superhero holiday snap
Dir: Jon Watts; Starring: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Samuel L Jackson, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Jacob Batalon. 12A cert, 129 mins
Having spent the last decade building up to the second most successful film ever made, it’s only natural that Marvel Studios would want to take a gap year. Spider-Man: Far From Home offers a breezy, Europe-set intermezzo between Avengers: Endgame and whatever is coming next – a kind of sorbet in blockbuster form to punctuate the binge.
Thanos has been vanquished and his genocidal finger-snap reversed, an atrocity the general public now casually refer to as “the blip”. They’re considerably more unnerved by the lack of A-list superheroes on the scene now the likes of Iron Man and Captain America have been moved to the folder marked "contracts expired", and the clamour is growing for a survivor to fill the void.
Tony Stark’s apprentice, young Peter Parker (Tom Holland), is as good a contender as any – except Peter prefers heroism on the friendly neighbourhood scale, and can’t see himself as an Avengers leading light. He’d rather just enjoy his high school year group’s summer tour of Venice, Prague, Berlin and London, though the untimely arrival of some elemental monsters from another dimension puts paid to that.
Like its 2017 predecessor Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home works best when it allows itself to be a teen movie. Holland’s take on the Spider-Man character remains an appealing mix of cocky, earnest and awkward – the early, special-effects free scenes with his classmates, including Zendaya’s winningly sardonic MJ, zip along amusingly, particularly when they offer a more down-to-earth perspective on the franchise’s more recent cosmic events.
And when a previously unknown but apparently mature and capable superhuman called Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) elbows his way into the limelight as a giant water demon lays waste to Venice, you can sense the duty-burdened youngster’s relief.
Yet that initial action scene confirms that returning director Jon Watts and his visual effects team still haven’t worked out what sets Spider-Man apart visually and kinetically from the rest of the superhero pack. After the relentless dazzle and invention of last year’s animated Oscar-winner Into the Spider-Verse, the spectacle in Far From Home with its CG fug and holiday-snap palette all feels a little bland and rote.
It’s telling that the only set-piece capable of drawing a gasp belongs entirely to Mysterio, as this Doctor Strange-like figure unveils the full extent of his Daliesque powers.
No shade intended, but Holland’s version of Spider-Man seems to work best when used sparingly – wisecracking during an ensemble battle or eliciting sobs at the end of Infinity War, rather than carrying an entire adventure single-handed. Even the approach to comedy here is an overstretched version of the small-dose model, with each supporting character given a single joke button to hit repeatedly over the course of two-hours-plus.
In a 90 minute film that wouldn’t prove the test of patience it becomes here, but there are no 90-minute superhero films. Perhaps now’s the time to have a look at that.
Spider-Man: Far From Home is released on July 2
