To the hundreds of poor dullards starved of real entertainment and good storytelling who are raving about this film and Tom Hardy's performance in it, you are likely the reason Hollywood is turning out such limp trash most days of the week. I ignored VENOM at the cinemas and watched it instead on DVD with my mouth agape at how annoyingly puerile the film is. Then again, I'm past the age of bed wetting and know how to read so I'm obviously not the target audience.

One element of the film I found interesting was its strong socialist message that pits the plight of America's poor, homeless and marginalised against the amoral excesses and indulgences of the rich who quite literally make their money by exploiting the poor and desperate. It's a fascinating subplot although of course its a message lost on its kiddie audience who want big bang smash boobs.

Elements of VENOM reminded me of the reviled and largely forgotten 1997 anti-superhero film SPAWN, although primitive CG aside, that film, which of course is terribly flawed, is still significantly better.The least annoying parts of the film are undoubtedly between Williams and Hardy, but not even Williams could save the lifeless two-dimensionality of the screenplay. Williams is the more nuanced actor of the two leads, while Hardy has always gravitated towards grotesque, excessive roles that lack subtlety. Then again, subtlety and nuance is something that contemporary juvenile American audiences (a tautology if ever there was one) simply cannot abide.

The true standout in the film was Riz Ahmed who played his villain very straight and never ventured into histrionics or excess. His performance was so chillingly pedestrian that when he becomes Riot the character loses all sense of threat to a silly Decepticon wannabe. I guess his underplayed performance fell off the radar for a lot of folks but its the emotionlessness and lack of empathy that made him a true villain, revealing what it takes to make it big in America.

I was gobsmacked to read the claim from many reviewers that the film is not formulaic, because VENOM is absolutely color-by-numbers filmmaking that feels like it belongs in a Michael Bay movie pack. You could pretty much set your watch to the inciting incident and all those other formulaic screenplay structures that have reduced commercial filmmaking to telling lifeless repetitive stories. Indeed, the film is so horribly Michael Bay that the dialogue between Eddie Brock and Venom is uncannily like something I'd see in a TRANSFORMERS movie. "What's wrong with that?" I hear all the four-year-olds scream. I rest my case.