Rated PG. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.
Are you ready for “Spider-Man” meets “Everything Everywhere All at Once?” As much as I enjoyed the art, effort, talent and ingenuity mustered in the making of “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse,” Sony’s follow-up to its 2018 Academy Award-winning, computer-animated hit “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” this whole “multiverse” thing has gotten way out of control and has become a gimmick and a bit of a cliche, allowing for all manner of excess and overkill. Fanboys love it.
In this installment of the “Spider-Verse” series (next up: “Beyond the Spider-Verse”), Brooklyn’s own Spider-Man aka Miles Morales teams up with multiverse Spider-Woman Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to battle the Spot aka Jonathan Ohnn (Jason Schwartzman) , a wise-cracking, faceless, blob-like creature capable of opening up holes to other dimensions. Eventually, Miles and Gwen attempt to team up with members of the multiverse’s Spider People, known as the Spider Society, only to have a run-in with their leader Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). At the same time, Miles and Gwen are trying to find a way to avoid the seemingly inevitable death of someone very important to each of them. In one of the film’s best sequences, the villain known as the Vulture aka Adrian Toomes (Jorma Taccone) attacks Manhattan’s iconic Guggenheim Museum and its patrons.
Describing the plot of one of these “Spider-Man” animated efforts is a pathetically inadequate way to express the film’s content and impact. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” pulses, crackles, glitches and flashes. Its sound and visual designs are an integral part of its deeply immersive impact. This is the filmmaking equivalent of a wizard casting a spell using all the dark arts at their disposal.
New York City is a maze, a jungle, an “urban-verse,” a vibrantly diverse setting for multiple races and nationalities to live and interact. Stan Lee’s hometown, NYC is this world’s original multiverse.
The visuals mix Marvel superhero imagery and characters with real-life images of New York City and the famous Brooklyn setting of the immortal (and illegal) chase in “The French Connection” and later in the story we will visit the comically narcissistic Spider-Man India in his hometown.
Producers and co-writers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (“Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse,” “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) give each world its own visual style. The shading and chiaroscuro recall comic book panel art at its finest. The Spot is a truly nightmarish creation, a horror to himself (?) as well as to others. In the middle of all of this, Miles has a meeting with his parents (Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez) and his school principal (Rachel Dratch) and later tells his parents that he wants to attend Princeton to study Quantum Physics (the respect for knowledge and learning in Marvel is another by-product of Lee’s immigrant background). In one of the stops along the multiverse, we will encounter a Lego Daily Bugle. Has the New York City skyline – equal parts Camelot, Oz and “Metropolis” – ever looked more magical? Does rock star Spidey look like Jimi Hendrix? An alternate universe Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) wears a furry pink bathrobe and carries baby daughter May strapped to his chest. Watching all the Spideys chasing Miles and Gwen I thought I was going to plotz. Composer Daniel Pemberton returns with another wonderfully inventive score. Congratulations to directors Joaquim Dos Santos (“Avatar: The Last Airbender”), Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”) and Justin K. Thompson (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”). Swing, Spidey, swing.
(This PG “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is truly kid friendly. Take them.)