‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ a great new start

The films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have a villain problem. Namely, aside from Loki and the Winter Soldier, most of their villains have a disposable bad-guy-of-the-week feel that’s more appropriate for a TV show than a blockbuster movie. But “Spider-Man: Homecoming” shakes that trend by giving us a great villain played by a great actor with motivations that almost anyone can relate to.

And that’s just one thing this latest iteration of Spider-Man does right.

After a quick prologue, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” catches up with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) after he’s been doing the Spidey thing for a while. He wants to step up from bagging two-bit thugs and getting cats out of trees and join the Avengers, but Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr) insists he’s not ready.

Meanwhile, Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) is making a living building weapons out of leftovers from the alien attack we see in “The Avengers.” Peter takes it upon himself to stop Toomes and his underlings in hopes of impressing Stark. All this while keeping his aunt May (Marisa Tomei) in the dark about his activities, wooing his high school crush, Liz (Laura Harrier), and putting together LEGO sets with his best buddy, Ned (Jacob Batalon). Man. Being a modern teen is some busy business.

“Homecoming” is the purest translation of the Spidey comic book source material. We get the smart, wisecracking Parker from the comics. Tom Holland is perfectly cast in the lead role. His Parker is always in over his head, but also always has a zippy one-liner at the ready.

Downey kills it as Stark. No surprises there. It was also nice to see Jon Favreau got a good chunk of screen time playing Happy Hogan. I’ve missed seeing him in these flicks.

The younger members of the cast are also great, Batalon in particular. I also got a kick out of Zendaya’s performance as Michelle, whose snarly verbal jabs scored a lot of laughs.

But the best performance in the movie was given by Keaton. His Toomes feeds off frustration average people have with the rich and the powerful who do whatever they want with no regard for how their actions affect working folks. It’s a feeling that’s easy to relate to, especially nowadays. Keaton makes Toomes vicious, menacing and, best of all, understandable. The result is easily the best Marvel movie bad guy since Loki.

Putting it all together is director Jon Watts. He focuses on the character of Peter and his travails leading his double life, instead of building a mythology or creating frames which look like they leaped off the comic book page. That’s the right way to make a movie like this, because if you don’t care about the characters, your movie is going to suck no matter how cool the visuals are.

Flaws? The only two that bothered me are the largely forgettable musical score (courtesy of Michael Giacchino) and a nighttime action sequence that was so darkly lit, it became hard to follow. Maybe it was the auditorium I saw “Homecoming” in, but if directors are going to keep doing nighttime fight scenes, they HAVE to learn to light better.

The Sam Raimi-directed “Spider-Man 2” is my favorite comic book movie of all time, mainly due to all the heart it has and how easily I can relate to Toby Maguire’s Parker in that movie. “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is a little closer to the comics than that film, but it’s missing some of the heart from Raimi’s movie. Plus Doc Ock is just a cooler villain than the Vulture. But “Homecoming” is easily the best Spidey movie we’ve gotten since “Spider-Man 2” and is totally worth checking out on the big screen.

4 ½ Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13