Spider-Man: Homecoming

The most amazing thing about the cinematic incarnation of Spider-Man may be the perpetually re-winding clock on Peter Parker. With each new iteration of the character, Parker gets younger. This film may, in fact, represent the closest avatar to the original vision of the character as a nerdy, somewhat hapless teenager (when not dressed in his costume). However, that doesn't necessarily mean this is the best movie about the web-spinning superhero. The execution is fine--nobody involved with these movies is ever not particularly talented at what they're doing--but, ironically, pushing Parker backward into his adolescence (as opposed to, say, the slightly more mature performance delivered by Tobey Maguire) seems to trivialize the doings to a certain extent. And while the visuals are fine--the Washington Monument scene is particularly well executed--some of the action set pieces just sort of run on and blur before the eyes. Ultimately, too, there's just a lack of depth; none of the pathos we saw in Spider-Man 2 shows up here; it all feels like kid stuff. Mostly entertaining kid stuff, but it goes no further than that.