Netflix brings us an honest and hilarious look at puberty.
SUMMARY
Nick Burch (Nick Kroll) is a boy just on the precipice of puberty. His best friend is Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney), who has been hit hard by hormones, represented by the Hormone Monster, Maury (Kroll). Their friends include the sarcastic and sad Jessi Glaser (Jessi Klein) and her hormone monstress Connie (Maya Rudolph), the horny Jay Bilzerian (Jason Mantzoukas), the nerdy Missy Foreman-Greenwald (Jenny Slate/Ayo Edebiri), openly-gay Matthew MacDell (Andrew Rannells), and the ghost of jazz legend Duke Ellington (Jordan Peele). Also, there’s a dog named Featuring Ludacris. Yes, he’s a pitbull. This is my favorite joke in the series.
Jenny Slate is great, but they had to recast her with a black actress for… obvious reasons.
END SUMMARY
Puberty is one of the hardest times for people. Your body is changing, your mind is changing, and most of your social circles are changing, but none of them seem to be changing in the same way. You suddenly have a lot more urges to f*ck, fight, or feed, but an entire planet of older people telling you that you have to suppress them. This show decides to represent that by a literal monster that compels children into giving into those urges, and it is probably one of the most brilliant conceits out there. Yes, Maury is often massively and inappropriately perverted, to the point that it may disturb the viewer, but that’s a part of puberty, and one that most people later forget (or suppress). The show even gives a voice to the societal stigmas associated with those urges with the Shame Wizard (David Thewlis). It’s impressive how many aspects of youth the show works into the metaphor.
This includes the anxiety mosquito and the depression kitty.
In addition to being commentary on modern youth, the show is one of the funnier things on television right now. The humor ranges from gross-out humor and slapstick to clever puns and wordplay and you can never figure out where the next joke is going to come from. One episode is literally about making a musical of the film Disclosure and, if you’ve ever seen Disclosure, you are probably laughing at the thought of doing a musical about a movie in which Michael Douglas sues Demi Moore for sexual harassment. The show often uses these ridiculous premises to make a legitimate point about an issue, whether it be misogyny, birth control, or the fact that Florida is a giant waste of land that should be scoured for the good of mankind (having lived most of my life there, this is the most valid point in the show).
Overall, it’s a funny show and if you’re not watching it, give it a shot. It’s good if you’re an adult, but if you’ve got a kid approaching or dealing with puberty it’s not a bad introduction.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
A brand new Spider-Man debuts along with a host of other Spider-Beings in this amazing work of comic art.
SUMMARY
Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is a teenage fan of Spider-Man (Chris Pine) who is dealing with his new life at a boarding school located in an elite area of Brooklyn. His father (Brian Tyree Henry) and his mother (Luna Lauren Velez) are both supportive, but also have high expectations of Miles due to his academic and athletic potential. After crushing hard on his classmate Wanda (Hailee Steinfeld), Miles goes to his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) for advice and ends up being bitten by a radioactive spider while painting a tunnel with his uncle. It turns out that Miles is now a new Spider-Man at a time when the world needs him most, because the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) is trying to open a portal to the multiverse which summons a number of parallel Spider-beings, including an older Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Peter Porker the amazing Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), SP//dr the Japanese mecha spider-woman (Kimiko Glenn), and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage). Together, they have to save the multiverse from a cabal of supervillains.
I wish this were a spoiler, but it was in the ads. Also, holy crap, I love this.
END SUMMARY
Origin stories are hard. Even if we’re being introduced an original character or a character that isn’t well-known, like Darkman or Ant-Man, going through all of the steps of a character’s transformation from zero to hero is usually formulaic. Some movies mostly eschew the traditional origin story in favor of only showing a few flashbacks of the origin, like Tim Burton’s Batman, but if you’re doing an origin story, they’re usually going to contain the same beats. This movie is no exception, except in how exceptionally it does it. In fact, it doesn’t just do an origin story, it heavily leans into all of the good things that can come from watching an origin story, then ratchets that needle up to eleven by introducing, not one, not two, not three, but seven Spider-beings in the movie, with even more by cameo.
Whereas, some movies can feature an already beloved character and a future superstar and still be garbage baked in hell’s own outhouse.
Part of it is that the film knows it can rely on the audience’s familiarity with the Spider-Man franchise. The first Spider-Man we meet is introduced using flashes from past Spider-Man movies, but with some twists to say “this is that Spider-Man, but not exactly, so don’t get worked up over continuity.” This movie doesn’t just rely on flashback origin stories, but it plays with the idea heavily by doing it multiple times, each time presenting it as an origin-story comic book in a different style resembling that character’s universe, including one humorous scene where they attempt to introduce three at the same time, overlapping their origins. Part of the reason why this works is that the characters are all variants on the same Spider-Man story, even though they don’t necessarily share gender, powers, or even species. It’s basically a movie dedicated to proving that even if there are only a handful of core stories in the world, the variations on those stories and the variations on the variations can provide us with an infinite amount of entertainment.
Zombie Joseph Campbell attended the premiere.
Despite the number of superpeople/superanimal in the movie, the film’s central story is that of Miles Morales coming to terms with not only being Spider-Man, but with the legacy that wearing a spider upon your chest brings with it. With every other Spider-character, they’re already at varying stages of being a superhero (i.e. brand-new, experienced, golden age, over-the-hill), which basically gives Miles an idea about all of the different ways that being Spider-Man can go. However, he also gets the benefit of all of them telling him the one thing that absolutely defines a Spider-Man: Always getting up when you’re knocked down. This isn’t a new theme, in fact it’s so overused it’s almost cliche, but the film actually gets to the implications of this statement, rather than just making it an empty platitude. A large part of this is that the art style in the film is very big on accentuating impacts. When a character gets knocked down, YOU FEEL IT. You know just how hurt they are right now and how hard it’s going to be to get up, which makes it actually feel like a heroic act when a hero, broken, bleeding, and beaten, still manages to continue.
This is concept art that didn’t make it in, but see those impact lines? Yeah, that’s what you feel.
Another thing is that this movie knows one thing that so many movies forget: Even in superhero movies, we want heart. Most of this movie isn’t focused on just watching Miles be Spider-Man, but on how he feels. Yes, he’s dealing with new superpowers and interdimensional travelers, but he also is dealing with guilt over not being able to help people due to his inconsistent powers, feeling like he’s disappointing his parents and his mentor Spider-Man, and just dealing with the difficulties of being a teenager. Much like in Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2, Miles’ emotional instability makes his powers unstable, which culminates in a scene in the movie in which he finally finds emotional clarity and his powers at the same time. In most films, the “suddenly able to use your powers” moment is cliche and feels unearned (exception: “I’m always angry” due to Rule of Awesome). But, since the film tied his powers to his emotions, his emotional growth in that moment actually DOES justify the sudden use of his abilities, giving the audience a massive burst of catharsis right before leading us to the third-act ramp-up.
And they exaggerate the eyes just a little to make him more expressive. Love it.
The art style in the film is possibly the best I’ve ever seen in an animated film, including Disney and Pixar, mostly because it varies from character to character (based on universes) and looks like living comic book panels, complete with animated sound effects. SP//DR is drawn as an anime character, Spider-Man Noir has no color whatsoever, Spider-Gwen has power ballads (she’s a musician in her universe) and bright colors, and Spider-Ham is a Looney Tunes style pig. When they all work in concert, it somehow produces an unbelievable surge of beautiful images rather than being an overload of visuals.
The script is comedic genius, as you’d expect from Phil Lord, but it contains a shocking amount of really dark moments. Death isn’t reserved for just Uncle Ben, because part of being Spider-Man is losing someone in the past, and we have a lot of Spider-Beings. This makes even the goofy parts of the movies feel like there are actual stakes to the fights. Also, your villain gets a backstory that lasts maybe 45 seconds, but is so complete that it almost justifies all of his actions throughout the movie, something that continues the ambiguous Marvel villains series (Thanos was right-ish).
It also contains possibly the best Stan Lee cameo (R.I.P. you wonderful man).
Not that one.
This isn’t just the best Spider-Man movie; this might be the best superhero film. If you can, see it in the theaters, because the visuals merit the big screen. If you can’t, see it anyway, because the script merits a small screen.
Ten Stars. Four thumbs up. 100% Fresh. Whatever you want to say, this movie is one of the best things I’ve seen in a while, maybe since How to Train Your Dragon. Even though it contains a heavy dose of every cliche in the origin story handbook, it manages to play all of them with just the right amount of variance and sincere love for the characters that it reminds us why all of those tropes get used in the first place. I love this film.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
The Joker On The Sofa 