They've saved the most fun for last with VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, although the first two films were so meh that you could interpret that as slight praise.
A great cast, plenty of laughs and mostly bloodless attacks combine with a couple strong action sequences for the oddest, final entry in the VENOM saga.
Tom Hardy is a blast as Eddie Brock, still playing body-Odd Couple with the ravenous Venom as he hides out in Mexico.
After a muddled and stupid opener (with yet more intergalactic lore and legend building, I am SOOOO bored by all of that) finds Eddie stumbling into some seriously bad hombres running a dog fighting hideout. The entire scene is laugh-out-loud funny, violent and fast. it's a great start.
When Eddie sees his name all over the news, he's determined to get back to the states to clear his name.
Meanwhile, a super duper secret subterranean base below Area 51 houses a massive research lab into the swirling symbiotic creatures like Venom. Juno Temple (The Offer) plays Dr. Teddy Paine, who works alongside military man Strickland (the horribly underused Chiwetel Ejiofor) on one of those projects that has "this is going to explode and destroy the universe"written all over it.
There aren't many surprises to be found in the basic plot, but the characters are an eccentric bunch!
Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man, Notting Hill) is Martin, a hippie UFO seeker with his entire family bundled in a beat up, bumper sticker covered van in search of aliens. He's hilarious, as are Hardy's one liners when Martin tries to get him to join in for a sing-a-long as they cross the Nevada desert.
Peggy Lu is back as Mrs. Chen and this time, she and Eddie/Venom meet up in Vegas for another hilarious scene sandwiched in between two major action set pieces. Lu nails every line and seeing Hardy in a tuxedo strolling into a casino makes you realize that he could have been a great OO7.
Stephen Graham (Snatch) is back as Detective Mulligan from the last film, and since he got killed in that one, offers up an intriguing storyline.
Screenwriter Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks) takes on the Director's chair for the first time and does a pretty good job, keeping everything moving forward and making a valiant effort not to get bogged down in endless exposition as so many of these films do.
It's a slight film in the Marvel realm and along with the Venom films, are made outside the creative umbrella of the other Avengers films. As such, they've always had an outsider stance, a "Never Say Never Again"-like position to the traditional Bond films.
You can toss all the Venom films into the side dish category, sitting at the kids table away from the best of the Marvel cannon like "Captain America:The Winter Soldier" and "Avengers: Infinity War". But this is, for me, the best of Hardy's Venom films.
Fast, enjoyable and lightweight, it makes you laugh while throwing a little heart in along the way. You could have cut that first dumb scene on another planet and the end credits sequence set on the same world and the film would have been better for it.
I'll give it a B-.
And that's a giant, pointy teeth gnashing, tongue flying improvement over the previous two entrees.
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