Such a relief!

Rating: 8/10 (2 July 2019)

It's 2:30am and I just finished watching Homecoming because I have a ticket for Far From Home for tomorrow night (wait, technically TONIGHT), but I kept putting off watching Homecoming over and over and over because the Sony movies wasted SO much of my time and money and made me SO sick of Spider-Man SO much that I just... HATED... Spider-Man. EVEN AFTER seeing (and loving) him in Civil War, Infinity War, AND End Game, I kept thinking "I should really watch Homecoming", and my brain STILL just kept responding with "...eh." and finding something else to do. It couldn't deal with sitting down to another disappointment.
... I LOVED this movie. Tom is an adorable, hilarious, wonderful Spider-Man, and an adorable, hilarious, wonderful teenager. Both Spider-Man and Peter Parker are written and acted like real, authentic people rather than characters written solely because "welp, gotta keep those movie rights, so..."
Aunt Mae is a lot better than I thought from the like, one trailer I saw. I expected a lot more "ha ha it's funny because she's sexy!" but actually, she was fine - and Tony's comments are limited to one.
The kids written around Peter are all pretty fun, too. Out of them all I think only Flash stood out in a bad way - and I wouldn't blame the actor on that one, the character just came off as a lazily-written bully.
My other complaint is that, while not going for an origin story was DEFINITELY the best thing they could do, it did feel a LITTLE bit like they needed to fill in a FEW more holes, which could have been done with less additional villains. I did like how they mostly just sort of quietly had them in there btw, no "HEY LOOK AT ALL THE VILLAINS IN THIS MOVIE GUYS, MORE VILLAINS AUTOMATICALLY EQUALS BETTER, RIGHT!?!?" But still... remove some unnecessary scenes with them, and explain to us WHAT it was Aunt Mae is going through (or just leave that line out, because honestly, she's an aunt, raising a teenager, alone. That's enough explanation for her behaving as she does.)
Michelle is a great character. Again, I love the way they put her in there. They didn't trumpet it, they didn't hint at it, she just quietly kept popping up, gaining my affection with every moment she was on-screen, until that delightful moment when it was pretty firmly confirmed that she's not going anywhere for at least one future movie.
And the villain. WOW, the villain. Although I always try and avoid spoilers as much as possible, I did hear a lot of talk at the time of release about how much people liked Keaton's villain. And I spent most of the movie going "ehhhhhh... he's o..KAY? I guess?", that beautiful moment when they reveal his connection with Spider-Man - UGH! AGAIN with just letting it HAPPEN! No teasing, no massive screaming hints, no underlining the connection ten times going DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT GUYS? DO YOU GET IT? LOOK WHAT WE DID GUYS! WE JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU GET WHAT WE DID! Just... oh hey, remember this guy? And I was as stunned as Peter was. LOVED it. A small, quiet, slow introduction to the concept which immediately changed EVERYTHING about what I'd watched before. Looooooooved iiiiiiiiit!
And DONALD GLOVER! As AARON DAVIS! Oh YES, I'm so happy! And I completely missed that in the movie! I just loved his character and was happy enough as it was, so I'm glad a reviewer I watched immediately after brought it up, because it excites and delights me - both because I REALLY want to see Glover as the Prowler, oh please please pleeeeeeeeease let that be a thing in future movies, and also because it means Miles Davis exists, and considering I am still riding a high from how much I loved Into the Spider-Verse, I REALLY want to see WAY more Miles Morales, and continuing how much Marvel continues to learn as they go... I really do have high hopes for what they could do with it.
And Happy! Geez, I love Happy. He kind of sneaks his way into your heart, and he got a lot of screen time here, which was great.
And Ned! Oh, Ned. Ned is a wonderful, wonderful best friend. He was very reminiscent of Nick Frost's character in Hot Fuzz - an ordinary, normal, everyday sorta person who just wants to be a badass. I mean... don't we all? His moment of glory with the web shooters was a lovely touch. And actually, while I'm on the subject, THAT is another thing I like about this movie - how it takes a bit of time to show what it's like being "the little guy" in a world full of superheroes. Buildings in ruins, jobs given and taken away (although I will say that was one nitpick about Keaton's character's origin: I mean, c'mon, how stupid do you have to be to figure that you can totally just SALVAGE deadly alien technology and nobody's gonna say 'boo' to that?) But back to Ned. I was a bit disappointed he only participated in a tiny bit of the final battle. I get Peter's arc had to have him alone for a bit but Ned got cut out REALLY early and "I was looking at porn" was, eh, a again felt like a lazy joke. I felt that could have been written better. STILL. Overall, don't care, Ned is fun and I like him and want more of him.
Aaaaaaaand caaaaaaaaan Iiiiiiiiiii juuuuuuuuuust saaaaaaaaaaaay....
I. LOVE.BOKEEM WOODBINE. I first experienced him in Fargo, and he was just SUCH a DELICIOUSLY menacing character, yet so suave and so cool, I was so disappointed at his eventual end! (Even if it totally made sense in Fargo's world, and in the world of that specific season.) I LOVED getting to see him flexing his charming menacing muscles again - even if it was somewhat short-lived, I do hope to see more of him in future movies - I can see them easily fitting him in as he'd just gotten his tech in this movie, so as with Peter, the guy just needs some practice, a better suit... he could be a FANTASTIC villain for a future movie! And frankly because of how great he was in Fargo, I think if they give him a decent role to run with, he could easily rival Hiddleston in any "Marvel's most charismatic villain" contest.
Kenneth Choi... I KNEW that guy looked familiar!! I love that he played his own grandfather. I'm also curious how many other little inside moments like this I miss. There are so many times when I look at a face and just KNOW I've seen it somewhere before...
Mr. Harrington! Intriguing JUST for the "not again..." line. That's one moment where I'm not REALLY annoyed that they didn't go into detail. I mean they could, and I'd watch it, but it's a beautiful moment where your brain is absolutely already filling in the details itself just based on that one single line - delivered beautifully and then just left alone.
I'm sure I'm missing some... I mean, it was PACKED with fun, and fun people - but it's 3am, and I gotta sleep. It's definitely a movie I'm going to revisit at least once to enjoy watching it from that completely different POV of knowing what's coming. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing the next movie tomorrow.
... I mean, tonight.