Spider-Man: Homecoming

Tom Holland is definitely the dorkiest onscreen wall-crawler to date, and by far the most believable as the snarky but whip-smart high school kid, painfully devoted to tracking down and stopping nefarious evildoers even when it means forgoing a fun pool party or dance with his friends and doe-eyed crush (which naturally it always does). Michael Keaton officially earns a perch on the Winged Wall of Fame, first playing Batman, then Birdman and now Vulture, weighted down by a chip on his blue collared shoulder about rich fatcats such as Tony Stark running the world and leaving the scraps for poor unheralded workers like him. Too old to occupy Wall Street or join the local Antifa loser squad, he starts a black market business selling hybrid weapons built by the Tinkerer combining human technology with alien scraps recovered from the devastation of the Chitauri invasion in the first Avengers film. It’s the MCU, y’know, so it’s really all just one big long saga, right? But after the overstuffed ensemble mayhem in the two Avengers movies and Civil War, which was an Avengers movie anyway, Homecoming is refreshingly lighthearted, sweet, funny and low-key. He’s still using training wheels, after all; enjoy it for its endearing charms while Holland and pals are still young. Only gripes: MJ is now Michelle, a petulant art-mope polluted by public schooling to the point that her career goal is professional protestor? And Gwyneth Paltrow gets third or fourth billing in the end credits for a 60-second cameo? Really? Who does she think she is, Anna Paquin?

[PG-13]