Is 'Venom' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Are Saying
Sony's kicking off its own Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-but-not-that-Avengers-one with Tom Hardy as both halves of the Eddie Brock/Venom symbiotic duo. Here's a few things you should know: it's out October 5th, this movie's been in development for ten years and three "Spider-Man" franchises, Spider-Man isn't in it and — this is bonkers — Tom Hardy said earlier this week on the press tour that his favorite 30-40 minutes from it have been cut. Does this mash-up of man and alien work, or is this another for entry for the list of bad comic book movies? Here's what the reviews say:
This Is An Origin Story Plot, Through And Through
"Venom" finds bad boy Eddie Brock in San Francisco — and at the top of the world. He hosts his own Vice-like news show, he's engaged to crackerjack lawyer Anne Weying (Michelle Williams, working some Billy Wilder-esque whip-smart magic) and he rides a motorcycle, shredding up The Golden City like a real bad boy. But after turning a puff piece on Elon Musk proxy Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) into an interrogation over the human experimentation practices of Drake's Life Foundation, Eddie is kicked to the curb by his ethically dubious media company.
[Polygon]
But that doesn't stop Eddie from snooping further, and with the help of a whistle-blowing scientist (an appealing Jenny Slate), he uncovers a lab full of human prisoners, all test subjects in a series of failed experiments to find a suitable human-symbiote match. It's here that Eddie comes into contact with Venom and finds, unfortunately, that he's the perfect host — and so, up to a point, is Hardy, who proceeds to toggle between his dueling personalities with spasmodic glee.
Beyond That, It's Harder To Say What Kind Of Movie 'Venom' Wants To Be
As much a body-horror thriller as it is a comic-book movie, "Venom" is also akin to a buddy comedy in which one of the buddies has to prevent the other from wantonly biting people's heads off. If that sounds ridiculous, it is — but "Venom" both knows it and leans into it, playing up the dark humor until it's pitch black.
It's so long into the movie before Venom comes completely alive as a character that the commercials amount to a kind of spoiler. And it's not hard to see why they're designed that way. Venom could have been a fun creation, but the film spends too long watching him…originate. The movie "Venom" actually wants to be is the sequel.
[Variety]
Marvel has established such a consistent formula in its cinematic universe that this radically different approach will surely be jarring to some, but the fact that this movie could never exist in the same world as "Captain America: Civil War" despite hailing from the same brand of comics is part of its charm.
Hardy Gives His Eddie/Venom Performances His All…
The most important thing about "Venom" is that Tom Hardy does an incredible job. His character doesn't necessarily work or even make sense within the context of the film, but he undeniably gives a capital-P performance. Hardy's Brock is composed of weird facial tics, squeaky vocal inflections, and hunched body language.
Hardy is a strange and ever-shifting talent. Pinning him down is like trying to . . . well, it's like trying to catch a big slobbery maniac that can reshape itself to adapt to any sticky situation. Which is all to say Hardy is the perfect guy for this role, and he turns in a vivid, sweaty, human-suit-on-the-fritz performance.
Hardy's beguiling turn also includes dropping a few registers to voice Venom, who razzes Eddie as they bond by brutalizing large portions of the San Francisco police force. An improvised quality to their banter, and Venom's increasingly degrading commentary, that makes the Jekyll/Hyde relationship more believable and hilarious.
[Polygon]
The back and forth between Eddie and Venom is so zany and outrageous, I for one couldn't get enough of it. "Venom" is a tonal anomaly so I do suspect some "laugh out loud" reactions weren't what the filmmakers were gunning for, but unintentional or not, something was working well. Very well in fact, which makes it an even bigger disappointment that Sony didn't just swing for the fences with this one.
[Collider]
… But You Might Get Very Little Out Of Hardy's Commitment
If you watch and listen closely, you can also see ghosts rattling around in Hardy's performance — the ghosts of actors like Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke, who attained a timeless cred by expressing themselves with a kind of post-verbal street poetry. They were the spiritual sons of Brando, whereas Tom Hardy, born in 1977, is like the eager grandson. In "Venom," his busy mannered acting fills a void, but it's also a stunt designed to convince the world, and maybe himself, that he's holding onto his cachet.
[Variety]
The reason it's so difficult to tell exactly how funny "Venom" wants to be is that outside of the Venom/Eddie relationship, for which Hardy's physicality is doing most of the heavy lifting, nothing about "Venom" suggests it's remotely clever or competent enough to be that funny on purpose.
[Mashable]
Whatever [Eddie's] shortcomings as a journalist or a mate, the character needed a deep repository of intelligence and resourcefulness that is nowhere detectable; he's all Basset Hound and no German Shepherd. Hardy has always had a terrific screen bearing and presence, but this may be his least interesting role and performance.
The Rest Of The Cast Really Gets Short Shrift
Williams gets stuck with a role that's mostly The Girl, although she does occasionally get to step up (after accepting the Venom situation in record time), and Ahmed and Slate give what may be their first bad performances, respectively overplayed and tentative.
[TheWrap]
Neither Michelle Williams (as Eddie's love interest) nor Jenny Slate (the scientist who tips him off to what Drake is doing) is given enough to do[…]
It brings in talented actors like Williams and Ahmed, and asks them to do little more than recite dialogue and stare blankly.
[Mashable]
The Action Sounds Messy Not In The Gory Way, But In The Sterile, Hard-To-Follow Way
As the symbiote takes hold, Eddie regularly morphs into a leering, overgrown sludge monster with glaring white eyes, an anaconda-like tongue and hideously snaggled teeth, all the better to snap off enemy assailants' heads with. In scene after rambunctious scene, Venom effectively manipulates Eddie like a rag doll, whether turning him into an expert fighting machine or sending him through the frenzied motions of a high-speed car chase.
Where "Venom" loses its energy is, predictably, in the requisite big action sequences, which are cluttered and incoherent and sapped of stakes. When a movie's creature is capable of infinite permutations and upgrades — Venom can turn his limbs into knives and axes and hammers and all other kinds of instruments of death — the creature tends to drown in all that unstoppable possibility. We also miss Hardy when he's disappeared inside the goo. No computer graphics, sleek as they may be, can compete with a human actor working at such breakneck full-throttle.
And for a movie loaded with people getting stabbed and beheaded by pointy alien extremities, all the violence remains resolutely, bloodlessly PG-13.
[TheWrap]
For Better Or Worse, It Doesn't Seem Like The Kind Of Movie Venom Fans Have Wanted
Director Ruben Fleischer has successfully walked the horror-humor tightrope before in films like "Zombieland," but "Venom" never strikes the note of ironic self-awareness that made that film work. Eddie hears Venom talking even when the creature hasn't taken over — Hardy voices both roles — and it gives their entire relationship an Odd Couple dynamic that is jarring at first and only grows more absurd as the movie goes on.
"Venom" is the kind of comic-book movie that people who hate comic-book movies think that all comic-book movies are like.
[TheWrap]
"Venom" is dying for a splash of fantasy, a stretch of the imagination, a jolt to the senses, but the early scenes have the draining effect of a 20,000 word Wikipedia entry.
[Polygon]
TL;DR
The movie doesn't seem to care if you're laughing with it, at it, or whatever. Just as long as you're engaged, rollicking along as it doles out fan-service while still making a gleeful hash of so many serious franchise movies about very silly things.
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