Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse: Thwip it up and start again

If there's one thing I bloody love, it's a good hard kick up the bum. Not literally you understand, and also not aimed in the direction of my own bum, but rather the kind that someone gives to a flagging movie franchise every now and again. I've wanged on about it a thousand million times but see Dynamite Comics' James Bond stories for a classic example of cracking the mould while remaining respectful to the source, or The LEGO Batman Movie for a triumphant and hilarious cape caper that never forgot what made its hero unique.

Superheroes, of course, are massively ripe for this kind of bum-kicking, and while Spider-Man got a decent enough reboot last year when the MCU finally got its hands on him, there was still a sense of the same beats being followed that have been the Spidey road map for five preceding films. So thank the lord (or, more accurately, Phil Lord) for Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, a film as unconventional as its embarrassing-to-say-out-loud title.

"Two for Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse
In Theaters Christmas In 3D And Real D 3D please"

Jerking us sideways into the universe of the Spidey comics, Into The Spider-Verse is set in an alternate dimension not entirely dissimilar to - but significantly different from - the one that the Spidey we know and love occupies, thereby immediately sidestepping tedious "BUT IS IT CANON?" questions. They've got their own webslinger, but they've also got Miles Morales, an ordinary schoolkid facing similar bother to that which Peter Parker experienced before his encounter with a nuclear arachnid. When Miles gets bitten by a similar bug, becoming New York's second Spider-Man, he finds himself up against exaggerated villains and aided by - for reasons way too bonkers to explain here - a handful of Spider-guys from other dimensions, including two Spider-women, one Spider-pig and one Spider-Nicolas-Cage.

As you have no doubt deduced, all of this turns out to be absolutely batshit crazy. It's the kind of plot and execution that live-action super-films are usually terrified to go near, and when you walk out of the Spider-Verse, anything Sony or Marvel ever did with the character on screen before suddenly seems about as cutting edge as the Nicholas Hammond-starring late '70s TV series in comparison. There are so many unfeasibly ginormous monsters, truly mental set-pieces and white-hot meta references to previous incarnations of the character that every cinemagoer should be issued with a coffee-table book of every frame of the film to get the most out of it.

But all that would be pointless if it weren't carried off with the love, humour and storytelling skills on display here. With Phil Lord writing and Chris Miller also tinkering in a producing capacity, the frothing excess of ideas that characterised The LEGO Movie spill out of the frame and into your incredulous, gaping facehole. Despite detailing about half a dozen origin stories (usually the curse of the modern superhero flick), Into The Spider-Verse is almost comically efficient, setting up its own cinematic universe of characters in the time it takes most franchises to stretch out one character's backstory. The assorted Spider-people are like the Avengers, if the Avengers were all slightly different versions of the same character, and each gets their own USP and moment in the sun without losing sight of the core plot.

"Is anyone else's NikNak sense tingling?"

That plot, of course, is Miles' journey from paint-spraying delinquent to web-shooting legend, and Lord peppers that story with a perfect balance of knowing nods to the Spidey mythology (uncles play as crucial a role here as ever, and familiar scenes from the past are given hilarious twists) while entirely surprising tangents come so thick and fast they give you thwiplash. And while Miles Morales isn't Lord's creation, the decision to use a half Puerto Rican, half African-American kid as the lead in a superhero movie (a youth- and diversity-celebrating choice reflected in the hip-hop soundtrack that left me scratching my old, white head) is only to be applauded.

The one thing I haven't mentioned yet is the thing that gives Into The Spider-Verse its licence to flip out and take all these liberties: it's animated. But this is nothing like any animation I've seen before; what's being fired into your eyeballs at a thousand miles an hour here can only be described as Spectacular Spider-Manimation. It's a mash up of comic-book dots and lines and bleeding-edge CGI that takes some getting used to (for at least half an hour I was convinced the cinema had forgotten to dish out the 3D goggles), but it's innovative, retina-popping and staggeringly beautiful at times. In all honesty it's also occasionally too much, especially in busy action scenes that overloaded my optic nerves a few times and, for me, could have been dialled just a notch below supermassively megafrantic. But I'm an old man who doesn't get hip hop, so what do I know.

Hold me

Bravo, then, to this mad, anarchic bastard of a film and the hurricane force blast of fresh air it aims at its overstuffed genre. What looked like it might have once been a straight-to-Netflix, kid-oriented time-passer for restless toddlers is in fact as game-changing a cinematic experience as any cape film we've seen since Superman: The Movie. It also makes a strong case for all superhero films from now on to be made like this, and with Nicolas Cage playing a monochrome, 1930s detective version of Spider-Man in each of them. If you ask me that's exactly the kick up the bum they all need.

22 Jump Street: Maximum Broverdrive

Remember 21 Jump Street? No? What's wrong with you? Jesus, it was only two years ago. You make me sick, you and your puny memory. This is why you never remember my birthday. Anyway, it's lucky for you that remembering 21 Jump Street is not high on the list of essential requirements for enjoying the sequel, because 91% of 22 Jump Street happens exactly like last time. EXACTLY LIKE LAST TIME. And while that's a problem for comedies like, say, Home Alone 2, it doesn't matter a jot here because it never, ever lets you forget it. Although you probably will because you forget everything.

I bet you don't even remember who these guys are. Ugh I hate you.

22 Jump Street kicks off with immediate nods to Bad Boys and Beverly Hills Cop, so it should be absolutely no surprise whatsoever that originality is not the order of the day. That said, being funny as fuck is very much the order of the day, and at this 22 Jump Street succeeds enormously. The idea of an entire first act spent pointing out its own deficiency sounds excruciating, but screenwriter Michael Bacall and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller squeeze the joke so hard that it's impossible not to go with the flow.

Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill return as Jenko and Schmidt, obviously, and one of them is very funny and likeable while the other is Jonah Hill. Tatum's comedy chops are coming along nicely and, while his bromance with Hill is undeniably chuckleable, he's impressively capable of carrying his own scenes. He pitches Jenko's stupidity with the laser precision of a far more seasoned comic and handles the action triumphantly; check out the mid-air slo-mo pouting or the Cate Blanchett gag for proof. Hill, meanwhile, does a lot of unfunny improvisation and spends an entire scene shouting because the louder you are the funnier you are, AM I RIGHT?!?! Actually that's not very fair, Jonah Hill is quite funny sometimes but it's hard to like him because as a person he appears to be an unpleasant homophone.

It's a little too long and there's another pointless oops-we've-accidentally-taken-mind-bending-drugs-time-for-a-wacky-trip sequence, but by and large 22 Jump Street is a ruddy good laugh providing you're in a packed cinema. Its crowning glory, however, is avoiding the easy option of sticking outtakes at the end to make you go home thinking you had more fun than you did, instead deploying something way more appropriate, ingenious and frankly amazing for the credits sequence. I'll be honest: I wasn't looking forward to this film, but it pleasantly surprised my black, mirthless soul, and now I find myself in the odd position of awaiting the twenty-threequel with something approaching anticipation. I must be getting soft in my old age.