Boring, unoriginal 'Venom' lacks any bite - East Idaho News
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Boring, unoriginal ‘Venom’ lacks any bite

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There’s a scene about thirty minutes into “Venom” where Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) goes to a fancy restaurant and proceeds to terrify and bewilder everyone present with his bizarre behavior. It’s an odd, quirky, funny scene — a real highlight. And the film never reaches such heights again.

“Venom” is the latest attempt by struggling movie studio Sony to build a bankable franchise. It stars Hardy as Brock, an investigative journalist who flushes his life down the toilet when he tangles with tech genius wunderkind Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). Things go from bad to worse when, during an attempt to expose Drake’s evil doings, Brock becomes host to a very hungry alien symbiote named Venom.

Before he has time to adjust, Brock is being pursued by Drake’s henchmen and dealing with Venom’s grotesque biological drives. The only way out is to find an equilibrium with Venom and take Drake down once and for all. What we get is an odd kind of buddy movie where Brock’s buddy is a voice in his head, sort of like a super-powered antihero version of “Fight Club.”

That may sound pretty cool, but the filmmakers drop the ball, big time. Start with how this film has been conceived. Venom’s story is intertwined with Spider-Man, but Sony has devised this film to exploit characters from the Spider-Man universe, while not involving Spidey himself. Not only does this change Venom’s origin story, but it also removes the most interesting conflict from Venom’s life.

Venom

To make up for this, the filmmakers have fashioned a lazy one-man-against-the-rich-and-powerful narrative to provide conflict. Brock’s nemesis, Drake, is so stereotypically slimy that he’s hard to take seriously. Drake also sends out an army of goons after Brock, but they’re so incompetent that it never feels like Brock is truly in peril. The sucks any tension or drama out of the story, leaving behind a bunch of boring scenes that don’t engage you.

And about those scenes: They all feel like they were stolen from other, better movies. For example, the movie opens with a fiery spacecraft crash. It’s a scene that recalls so many other recent films that it’s hard to keep your head from spinning long enough to pinpoint specific examples. Scenes of Brock talking to Venom smack of Smeagol/Gollum scenes in the “Lord of the Rings.” Nothing this movie does is done well enough to distinguish it from its superior predecessors.

But even hackneyed, unoriginal films can be saved by great acting. Too bad that the film mostly wastes a talented cast. Hardy is one of the movie’s few bright spots. His take on Eddie Brock is desperate, quirky, and interesting. His dialogues with Venom provide some much-needed laughs. Hardy can’t save the movie on his own, but he is easily the best thing about this movie.

The rest of the cast doesn’t fare nearly as well. Ahmed is plenty slimy, but he fails to be the least bit threatening or scary. Michelle Williams gets stuck in a thankless role as Brock’s love interest. Jenny Slate is completely wasted.

There’s so much much else wrong with “Venom,” from poorly-shot action scenes to the visual effects that make Venom look like somebody covered Brock in wet yarn. But the worst thing about this movie is that it seems to have been made exclusively for studio executives to make money.

Venom fans won’t appreciate the changes made to the character’s origin, while comic book fans won’t be impressed by a flick that pales in comparison to comic book anti-hero movies like “Logan” or “Deadpool.” Every big Hollywood movie is a cash grab. It’s just that the good ones find a way to hide that fact. Venom doesn’t and that might be its biggest failure.

1 ½ Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Thanks to Fat Cats in Rexburg for providing screenings for movie reviews on EastIdahoNews.com.

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