Venom: The Last Dance Review

 

I saw Venom: The Last Dance, and here are my thoughts...

Eddie & Venom have to go on the run from the government and a cosmic evil and get into some shenanigans along the way. 

So this movie is sloppy, like four-day-old Chilly throwing into a lawn mower level of slop...

The first act of this movie I thought had pretty bad dialogue, just a lot of people speaking in exposition and jokes that fell flatter than a piece of paper on a pancake.

The big emphasis on Eddie & Venoms relationship is there Abbott & Costello, Ren and Stimpy comedy stylings, and Tom Hardy gives it his all playing both roles (I did enjoy him in the more down-to-earth dramatic parts), but the humor was so random and goofy. I was expecting Mickey and Donald to show up lol 

The villains are nothing... We got a “big bad"-looking space elf who spends the whole movie looking like he fell asleep taking a sh*t, an “attack of the clones"-looking crab monster, and a general who is made to look evil and mean, until you think about it for a minute and realize... he has a point. 

There are some scientists in the new and super secret “area 55" who are just there to go “but the aliens can be our friends," and it’s like, “They have to co-inhabit people's bodies against their wills and forced to eat brains, like ET, these are not. 

Juno Temple plays the scientist with a tragic backstory that she will not shut up about, and when all is said and done, she doesn’t really do much. Like they set it up, she’ll have a big part of the climax and have a character arch, but she’s pushed to the side, and her payoff makes you go, “Why was she so important?”

Radom nit pick, without spoiling anything... This movie does not know how lighting works. 

About the halfway point, there’s this family introduced, and I kind of enjoyed their scenes because the humor worked. Nothing laughed out loud, but it did put a little smile on my face, and the actors really elevate the material with their performances. Although they do come back around, so the climax can have some more personal steaks; I mean, it wouldn’t feel as personal if they weren’t there, but it was more plot convenience than organic to the story.

There’s a part in this movie where Venom knows to do this one thing because it would lead the bad guys right to them... And he does it anyway just for a wacky musical number. It’s ridiculous. It’s like “the greatest evil the universe has ever known is after us; by doing this, we would be putting all life in the universe and all our loved ones in danger... Hey Macarena !!!!”. It just really undermines the stakes.  

The climax turns into a generic 80’s Saturday morning cartoon, like bright, distinct action figures slamming into each other.  

Also, some of the big lore elements from the first movie are kind of ignored for action, sequences sake, so that was inconsistent.

They try to have a big emotional ending, not necessarily because they earned it but because this is the “last movie." It didn’t do much for me, but there was genuine emotion put in, so I appreciate the effort. 

Dude, the credits on this are f-ing ridiculous; there are like 15 minutes that lead to a dud of a post credit scene... I wrote a lot of this review during them; that’s how long they are.

So this isn’t the worst movie; it’s just more forgettable and generic than anything else, but it had a few nice moments. I give it two stars ⭐️⭐️