Spider-Man: Far from Home review – post-Endgame outing lacks Marvel sparkle
Tom Holland swings into Europe on a school trip that sees Prague under attack, Italy in danger – and Jake Gyllenhaal wearing a very weird helmet
Well, not too far from home. In fact, we are on pretty familiar ground, despite Spider-Man now going on a hormonally charged school trip to Venice, Prague and other European cities whose national governments have given this film tax breaks.
For all these exotic novelties, this is a very mainstream Marvel picture, written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and directed by Jon Watts, culminating in the traditional CGI damage to tourist landmarks in the time-honoured final battle-spectacular. A new character has been perfunctorily added in the form of Mysterio (Gyllenhaal) and the film is certainly nowhere near the envelope-pushingly surreal ambition of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, from last year.