2018 cartoon
Rating: 15/20 (Dylan: 14/20)
Plot: A graffiti artist turns into another Spider-Man and gets his own origin story.
Not being well-schooled in Spider-Man aside from bits and pieces of the cartoon I saw as a kid (When's Firestar getting her own movie, by the way?) and the various movie incarnations, I felt that I missed some inside jokes in this one. There are various Spider-People in this, and I was pretty sure that most of them (Spider-Lady, Spider-Man Noir, etc.) were taken straight from comics although I had my doubts against the silly Spider-Pig. With all those Spider-People and with this plot involving multiple dimensions, this could have been a complete mess. Hell, I have trouble understand superhero movies anyway, so this one probably should have baffled me. Instead, I thought it was tightly-constructed, a story that works as a smooth and natural origin story while having a lot of heart. The action scenes are thrilling, even when they're a little confusing, and there's some great humor. A Nicolas Cage-voiced character who calls somebody a "turkey puncher," and Jake Johnson is the perfect voice for an out-of-shape surly version of Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
The real stand-out is the animation. There are some things in here that I don't believe I've seen before, and the way these different character's styles--the slapsticky cartoonish Spider-Pig stuff, the brooding black-and-white Spider-Man Noir, the anime-looking little girl with her Spider-Robot friend--are blended together is really something. The action is vivacious, but even when it's just our main character walking around Brooklyn or painting on a wall, there's a really liveliness to the animation. I also liked the texture in a lot of this. At times, you can see texture that makes this seem like it's straight from a comic book page, and onomatopoeia splashing or zooming across the screen or occasional thought bubbles add to that comic-y feel. Funky, psychedelic multi-dimension machine mayhem made colors I doubt I've seen on the big screen before. It's very very cool and wildly entertaining.
I enjoyed the voice work in this. It was a pleasure to hear Cage, and I bet as a comic fan, he had a lot of fun playing this particular character. I already mentioned Jake Johnson who might have had the funniest lines, and John Mulaney was funny as the Spider-Pig. Spider-Ham is apparently what he's called. My Spider-senses thought it was Nathan Lane, but my Spider-senses were apparently off this afternoon.
My son says this is the best Spider-Man film ever made, and I'm not sure I can argue with that. Of course, he's not seen 3 Dev Adam.
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