Review of Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) by Thegldt — 07 Aug 2019

Jake Gyllenhaal excels in his first superhero role (since ‘Prince of Persia’?) Tom Holland continues to be perfect as Spider-Man/Peter Parker — and in ‘Far From Home’, he’s raw and the most vulnerable he’s ever been.

With its high jokes-per-minute ratio, this may also be the MCU’s funniest entry yet. But it’s also trying to be emotional and dramatic. In the first half, it’s a decent globe-trotting, teenage romantic-comedy affair. Later, it becomes super comic-booky with dizzying but stylistic visual sequences. It may come down to personal preference whether you appreciate this tonal shift or if you think it’s tonally confused.

‘Far From Home’ also tackles relevant political themes (which I can’t spell out here because it could easily spoil the plot). If you don’t recognize them, the movie will definitely hammer down those themes one last time in the first end credits scene.

I really would’ve given this 4.5 stars, but as a hater of expositional dialogue, I couldn’t stand one character’s lengthy speech obviously meant to tell audiences what was happening. It was too in-your-face to be satisfying.