Friendly Neighborhood

Well, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) was a surprise - a Spider-Man movie that we liked! The Sam Raimi trilogy was probably good (I didn't even mind the last one more than usual), but I just never liked Spidey as a character, so they weren't really my thing. The Andrew Garfield duology was a bit of a fizzle, although I liked him in the first, not so much in the second. I'm glad we kept trying.

It starts with some "found footage": some cellphone movies Spider-Man (Tom Holland) took when Tony Stark and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) took him for the big melee at the end of Capt. America: Civil War. Then, it's over, and he's back in high school. He tells some people that he was interning for Tony Stark, which is cool, but they never call again. He's bugging Happy every day, leaving pathetic voice mails, but they think he's just a kid (and they are kind of busy). So he hangs out with his chubby friend (Jacob Batalon) and sighs over cute fellow debater, Zendaya.

Meanwhile, Michael Keaton and his team have the contract to clean up the alien trash left over from the Event, when the government comes in and puts him out of a job. So he keeps a little here and there, and gets ahold of a little more, and starts building alien tech weapons.

Spidey notices something is up when some punks in Avengers masks use one the weapons to push over an ATM across the street from his favorite bodega. He doesn't have Stark's high-tech suit, so he makes due with PJs and a ski mask, more or less. Then his buddy Batalon finds his secret identity.

So there's a cute mix of superhero action and John-Hughes-style high school drama (seriously - the cast watched a bunch of Hughes to get in the mood). But mostly, it's just fun. This seems to be one of the things that Marvel has been getting right - not just the quips and the webslinging, but an overall sense of joy and exhilaration.

Lots of fun little things in the movie, like the recorded messages from Captain America the kids have to watch in school. When the (black) gym teacher turns it on he mutters, "Whatever. He's probably a war criminal now or something." This all pays off after the credits in a way that is totally worth waiting for. And waiting...

Semi-SPOILER: the capper in the last act is when Peter Parker picks up Zendaya to take her to the Prom, and her dad is Michael Keaton. So it's that uncomfortable kid-meets-date's-father thing, and the father is a super-villian who immediately figures out your secret identity. I won't say Keaton is the only actor who could pull this off, but he sure pulls it off.

In conclusion - no origin story for this Spidey!