My Spidey Sense Is Not Tingling

Rating: 3/10 (12 July 2017)

So I'm just back from seeing Spiderman: Homecoming, which I have been looking forward to for ages: I'm a big Marvel movie fan. There are weaker ones (The Dark World, Iron Man 2) and there are stronger ones (Winter Soldier, Civil War, Avengers 1) but I've been having more reliable a good time at pretty much every one of them I've seen than anything else happening in cinema this century, so I had every expectation this one was going to fill me with equal glee.
Right from the opening scenes, though, something felt a little off, in both tone and pace: first of all it felt like it was trying too hard to be 'young', 'hip' and 'fun' to actually BE young, hip and fun, and the end result seemed to me simply cluttered, forced and frantic.
Secondly, the forced diversity and heavy-handed political interjections left a sour taste in the mouth - much like Marvel's presently failing line of comics. Up till now the cinematic universe has escaped this kind of preachy, fun-spoiling PC propaganda, and it makes me wonder what this forebodes for future Marvel movies, especially the eternally unpopular Captain Marvel, which no-one wants and yet is inexplicably due to be with us in about 18 months, for no other reason, as far as anyone can discern, but that the character is female.
I was aware by about halfway through that the only time I had even chuckled was at a couple of the throwaway Captain America jokes, whereas I bust a gut at Guardians and Ant Man and Dr Strange and The Avengers and just about every other Marvel film. Not a good sign.
Other problems? Well, the showcasing of Iron Man throughout pretty much sidelines Spidey from his own movie. Spiderman messes up, Iron Man comes saves the day. Repeat. There's also way, way too much technology in it and stuff about the suit - true, that itself becomes part of the story in the last third of the film ("If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it") but by then we've already had to sit through an hour or more of unfunny jokes about Peter messing up in it and falling over like a clown and saying 'derp'. This much attention on the ultimately unnecessary outer garment means at times the film seems far too close to the stories of Ant Man or Iron Man himself, to the degree it can't help but actually feel derivative and old hat.
Spiderman was never about technology - he never needed a special suit because he already had SUPERPOWERS, but other than a generic superhero strength, none of those unique abilities (the 'spidey sense', the natural ability to stick to walls, etc) are at all on display in the film.
So what was good? Well, the three leads - Tom Holland, Michael Keaton and, to a lesser extent, Robert Downey Jr (who was literally phoning in a lot of it). Nothing extraordinary, and very little depth, but solid and likable acting all round. Unfortunately, all of the secondary and tertiary characters - and there are oodles of them - are as thin as tissue paper and about as integral to the story. No-one is likable, or memorable, and Peter's useless fat friend is by far the most annoying character you will see this year.
What else? I liked the Vulture's suit when he was flying, and some of the special effects were good, although the fight scenes at the end were cut too fast to be able to see what was going on, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Overall, this is a movie too intent on grabbing a younger audience, at the expense of anyone else tuning in. The liberties taken with the original source material are all to the detriment of the story, and the 'fun! fun! fun!' agenda means there is no genuine drama or depth of feeling, and hence no characters we can invest in or care about.
It isn't that it's a bad film at all, it's just a long way off being a good one, or even good enough.