Watch my SPOILER review on YouTube
A mostly formulaic superhero origin story that is strengthened by the strong family dynamic and lower-class setting. At this point, it’s hard to do much new with a superhero movie, especially an origin story. There’s a lot of similarities here with the “Venom” film, except the alien here has much less personality and Jamie’s powers look more like Iron Man’s. Even the villain has fairly similar goals. The film benefits greatly from the family elements, as they’re a part of the new superhero’s journey from start to finish. Despite some over-the-top antics, the emotional moments land. (Although the humor is more hit and miss and the love story felt like it moved a bit too fast.) It was also an interesting twist of setting it within a lower-class neighborhood and with a family of Mexican immigrants…even if some of the cultural references went over my head. The action was fine, even though the effects were a little wonky at times. The film also used a lot of needle drops to turn what could been darker moments into light-hearted ones. While the primary villain was stereotypical white-collar evil, they did make a late attempt to make the secondary villain more sympathetic. There is a brief mid-credits scene, but with the state of DC films, who knows if it will lead to anything.
**1/2 out of *****