Review of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) by 43In2014 — 17 Dec 2021

The short review: Teens and fans would absolutely love this film! However, I think it is merely good and also rather frustrating.

Related media: I have seen all of the MCU films apart from Eternals, which I’ll watch on TV instead. Shang-ChiThe short review: Teens and fans would absolutely love this film! However, I think it is merely good and also rather frustrating.

Related media: I have seen all of the MCU films apart from Eternals, which I’ll watch on TV instead. Shang-Chi was great in the first half and only OK in the final quarter.

What's it like? With Peter Parker’s alter ego exposed in the previous film, he goes to ask Dr Strange to cast a spell for the world to forget he’s Spider-man, only to ask for more and more exceptions mid-spell-casting, thus screwing up the spell. A frustrated Dr Strange attempted to fix this spell only for Peter to interfere again, thus creating an even bigger mess. Mid- or post-credit scenes: One mid- and one almost trailer-length post-credit scene.

Positive: 1) With villains of other Spider-verses coming into this universe - it’s in the trailers - I had expected the obvious things to happen, but it wasn’t that straightforward, so kudos to the writers.

2) There are some very funny jokes between characters of different Spider-versus, some of which are real-life jokes about the actors themselves.

Negatives:

1) In the first MCU Spider-man film, Peter Parker messed up while trying to catch the villains, thus leading to a ferry being split in half. In the second film, he messed up by giving the special glasses to the villain, thus leading to the destruction in London. In this third film, he messed up again. This trope/storyline is just far too repetitive, as if there would be no other plotline that does not involve Peter messing up. I understand that Peter is a kid growing up, but is any kid going to mess up in three big ways in their teens?

2) Teens and fans would absolutely love this film, because of the appearance of the characters from other Spider-verses, but the directing of a few of these critical characters was poor, thus leading over-emotional and slow performances. Some 15 min could be chopped off from this film.

3) The final battle was very confusing because there were too many characters and director did not do a good job.

4) The mess created by Peter Parker was not satisfactorily resolved and leaves much to be desired, but I do not think this would form any part of the sequels to this – yes there will be more MCU Spider-man films!

How would the different age groups rate this:

Children: (not rated for children).

Teens: Excellent.

Young adults: Excellent.

Medium-age adults: Good. Old adults: Average. This may just be too confusing/frustrating for them.

My rating: 4/5 (no half scores). Worth it to watch it in the cinema.