In the recent furore of cut and shut, fiddled with blockbusters, by talented, inexperienced directors, puppeteered by hack studios,

Rating: 8/10 (18 February 2020)

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a honed, clear, flowing popcorn flick with a charming and watchable lead from Tom Holland (a perfectly agreeable young Nathan Drake).
First and foremost despite looking great, Homecoming is just one big Easter egg inside of an Easter egg. It's an edible Russian nesting doll of injokes and nudges and winks and throwaway moments; take Giacchino's cheeky nod the animated theme at the start, and some of them work but most of them don't. The timeline for a start feels a little muddled (which film was Avengers Tower rebuilt in? What bad guys did what where and left what behind?), but I did roll my eyes with a certain satisfaction at points which pretty sums up my feelings on the film.
I mean, they did all they could; they made it a Peter Parker movie where Parker was more interesting than Spider-Man (ASM's Andrew Garfield is spectacular but he had much less to work with than his Spider-Man). The action sequences were not exactly bad and they were coherent but just a bit uninspired. But to be fair ASM2 was far too inspired! And I'd like to take a moment to complain about the miscast, from another film, saccharine, live-studio-audience-sitcom-type actress Laura Harrier playing Liz that was cringey to the extreme.
But by god did I not see some of the third act coming. I mean I should have, I just didn't, so I applaud it for that. It led to some nice direct parallels between teen angst and superhero trials It was nice to see Spider-Man finding Peter Parker and then fusing the two: Not finding your identity in your assets, gifts, support but instead in yourself is a clear and relatable theme; Peter is not a suit or an Avenger or an intern for a billionaire, he's a young boy that makes mistakes and bounces back and does the right thing.
I liked the marketing/posters, I liked the poppy but indistinct score, the smart costume made it different enough. The blogger opening was fresh and down to earth and more Happy Hogan is always welcome. And the Iron Man-esque stinger at the end and the post-credits sequence are both laugh out loud. Plus there's a key tone in this film where Peter and his friends are aware of superheroes, and in a way, superhero films, and this kind of fourth wall thing (man in the chair??!!) made for a nicely unique tone compared to the other Spider-Mans.
So Homecoming has some hilarious, on-point, gags, some excellent acting and great, out-there, actor choices; having two lead females (three if you include Aunt May) of overt ethnic minorities is a huge deal these days, it shouldn't be, it should be everywhere, but it isn't and here should be applauded that his school feels like a real one.
But at the end of the day, most of all, Homecoming is Avengers 2.5, or maybe, for better or worse, Iron Man 3.5.