In a world where we can't go more than a few years without a Spider-Man reboot, here we have another. However, while past films focused solely on Peter Parker, this film opens up the world to several other Spider-Men. At the centre of the story is Miles Morales, a teenager that is bit by a radioactive spider. He sees Peter Parker's Spider-Man fighting to stop an inter-dimensional device from being used, and winds up meeting Spider-Men from different dimensions that all must help him defeat evil. These include another Peter Parker, Spider-Gwen, Peni Parker, Spider-Man Noir, and Spider-Ham.
The voice cast for this film includes Shameik Moore as Miles, Jake Johnson as Peter Parker, Nic Cage as Spider-Man Noir, John Mulaney as Spider-Ham, Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen, and Mahershala Ali and Brian Tyree Henry as Miles' uncle and father. Jake Johnson does some incredible voice work here, taking a character we know as an energetic teenager and giving us a mid-life crisis take on the character. There aren't many lines from Spider-Ham but when he does talk, Mulaney does a great job giving him a goofy but suiting voice. Ali and Henry are both quite solid, and their voices for a lot of the film are hard to recognize so I'd say they did a very solid job. Everyone else is solid but those are the standouts for me.
The voice acting is quite good, and the story itself is interesting, but the real appeal for this film is its style. The film blends CGI with hand drawn animation to create a visual style that looks like it was taken straight out of a comic book. There are even scenes with thought and action bubbles to give the film a distinctly comic-book vibe. Even more impressive to me is the cohesion within the animation. Things are happening rapidly and the film is constantly moving, yet the animation and editing are so pristine that it is never hard to follow the action. With the amount of major comic-book style action going on I find it crazy that I never had trouble following along, so that is something I found very impressive. In terms of flaws I only have two. One is that I wish there was more development with the Spider-People from the other dimensions, as it takes a while for them to be introduced and none get fleshed out as much as I'd like. The film is also just a bit too fast paced. It takes a while to get into the action, focusing more on Miles for a while, but with the additional inclusion of the other dimensional characters it just feels like too much is crunched into a two hour run-time.
I really enjoyed this movie. It introduced more casual fans to lesser known characters which were all very unique and interesting, and it played with comic-book style brilliantly. If you haven't gotten around to it yet give this film a watch.
Rating: 4.3/5
Written by Matt McKenzie
The voice cast for this film includes Shameik Moore as Miles, Jake Johnson as Peter Parker, Nic Cage as Spider-Man Noir, John Mulaney as Spider-Ham, Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen, and Mahershala Ali and Brian Tyree Henry as Miles' uncle and father. Jake Johnson does some incredible voice work here, taking a character we know as an energetic teenager and giving us a mid-life crisis take on the character. There aren't many lines from Spider-Ham but when he does talk, Mulaney does a great job giving him a goofy but suiting voice. Ali and Henry are both quite solid, and their voices for a lot of the film are hard to recognize so I'd say they did a very solid job. Everyone else is solid but those are the standouts for me.
The voice acting is quite good, and the story itself is interesting, but the real appeal for this film is its style. The film blends CGI with hand drawn animation to create a visual style that looks like it was taken straight out of a comic book. There are even scenes with thought and action bubbles to give the film a distinctly comic-book vibe. Even more impressive to me is the cohesion within the animation. Things are happening rapidly and the film is constantly moving, yet the animation and editing are so pristine that it is never hard to follow the action. With the amount of major comic-book style action going on I find it crazy that I never had trouble following along, so that is something I found very impressive. In terms of flaws I only have two. One is that I wish there was more development with the Spider-People from the other dimensions, as it takes a while for them to be introduced and none get fleshed out as much as I'd like. The film is also just a bit too fast paced. It takes a while to get into the action, focusing more on Miles for a while, but with the additional inclusion of the other dimensional characters it just feels like too much is crunched into a two hour run-time.
I really enjoyed this movie. It introduced more casual fans to lesser known characters which were all very unique and interesting, and it played with comic-book style brilliantly. If you haven't gotten around to it yet give this film a watch.
Rating: 4.3/5
Written by Matt McKenzie
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