“SPIDER-MAN: far from home” – a movie review by Gary Smolker, Movie and Value Critic

Personal Background

I am a 73 year old “young adult.”

Story

This is a young adult love story set in a save the world from evil series of edge of the seat scary adventures encountered by a group of American high school students while on a trip to Europe organized by their high school as an educational summer enrichment activity.

Financial Facts

As of today this movie has grossed $310 million worldwide.

Drama

The tense drama in this movie occurs while a group of high school students are on a summer trip chaperoned by two of their high school teachers.

High School Teacher Slam

The summer trip is an activity organized by their high school.

As the story unfolds on the screen, we learn that the two high school teacher chaperones are incompetently naive, have no imagination, and accept unusual things that happen repeatedly during the trip without question.

The high school teacher chaperones are dumb and dumber characters.

My reaction to the high school teacher chaperones was, “How could anyone that is put in charge of high school students be so stupid.”

High School Boys’ and Girls’ Shyness, Lack of Experience and Lack of Imagination

Peter Parker (Spider-man) has extraordinary powers, but no experience with girls.

Peter has no prior experience being in love with a girl.

Peter is very brave.

His role in life is to protect the residents of the little city where Peter lives.

But in this movie, Peter is troubled by lack of social boy-girl interaction courage.

Peter doesn’t know how to take control of his love interest anxiety.

Peter totally lacks trial and error experience in this situation.

Peter doesn’t know how to initiate contact with his young woman love interest.

Peter is “exclusive.”

Dramatic Tension Builds

Peter is troubled.  He doesn’t know how to connect to MJ, the female classmate who is Peter’s love interest.

MJ doesn’t know Peter has a love interest in her; MJ doesn’t know or suspect that Peter is in love with her.

Peter plans to tell MJ how he feels about her – that he loves her – when they visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

More Dramatic Tension

In an opening scene, Peter’s high school classmate friend Ned Leeds tells Peter to forget about MJ: “We will be bachelors in Europe.  European women love Americans.  We are Americans.”

Life and Death Adventures

Peter doesn’t know, but will find out at the end of the movie, after living through a string of life and death adventures, that MJ has a strong love interest in Peter.

Unintended Consequences

The movie teaches that every plot (any plan) can go awry, result in unintended consequences.

Peter would love to sit next to MJ on the eight hour flight from the East Coast to Europe.

When Peter and Ned go to be seated on the plane they find out that Peter will not be sitting next to MJ.

Peter and Ned hatch a plan that goes awry.

Ned tells everyone that Peter is allergic to perfume and must change seats.

In the seat changing shuffle that ensues,

• Ned gets seated next to a cute girl classmate [Betty Brant] that Ned will fall in love with during the plane flight.
• Ned and Betty fall in love with each other while playing video games together during the eight hour flight to Europe.
• MJ gets seated next to another boy. This boy has a strong love interest in MJ.
• Peter gets seated next to someone Peter doesn’t want to sit next to.

P.S.

There are also intense action sequences based on neat hologram based plot twists.

Being the romantic that I am, I chose instead to focus on the love based subplots, exclusively.

Gary Smolker, Movie and Value Critic

Copyright © 2019 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved