So this movie was kind of crap, but also kind of amazing too! It's a mess but I had a lot of fun laughing at it's expense. It was basically everything that I hoped for...well okay an R-rating is what I hoped for but ehhhh...

Tom Hardy has a really bad New Yorker accent that's like a cartoon, but looking past that he did a good job here. He really gets his character and does add a lot to the movie. And the relationship between Venom and Eddie is pretty great. It's not quite a "Jekyll and Hyde" situation, but the whole interactions between the two characters were pretty great. And the stuff with Venom that we do get is also pretty cool too. I like the buildup to when we see full Venom in action, and he does remind me a lot of the comics. So that is the one real genuine praise I can give outside of some odds and ends like the motorcycle chase being pretty fun to watch and Michelle Williams is also good here too despite her weak character, but more on that later. Unfortunately for some, but fortunately for me, the movie is broken!

The action scenes are pretty bland. While I did like the motorcycle chase scene, outside of the Symbiote power there really isn't much new when it comes with the framing and stunt choreography that I haven't seen before, and honestly better. The motorcycle chase is the only good action scene, because every other action set piece is poorly shot, jumbly edited, and depending on the setting also hard to follow sometimes when it's in darker settings. Which is especially true with the fight sequence with Venom and Riot. Both characters do look rather similar and seeing them duke it out with the mess of editing it makes it hard to figure out who was fighting who. But it does have a roundabout way of being funny to watch when you see these reoccurring elements done before in other action films.

Riz Ahmed makes for an underwhelming bad guy. Sure he is a generic bad guy, but if you ham it up it can be fun to watch. However Ahmed plays him very reserved and not very expressive, always having a very blank expression. Which I guess is kind of the point given the character is supposed to be cold, but I just never bought him. The character is a more evil version of Mark Zuckerberg, but he comes off more like Gabe from the Office! Although Ahmed got nothing on Jenny Slate! She is flat out terrible in this, underacting and looking so bored on screen! She always has a super bland and blank expression! Like there's a scene where she gets caught whistleblowing the company she works for, and her expression when she is caught comes off like she left the lights on in her apartment when she left. Like...why?

There was some bad publicity leading up where Tom Hardy blatantly said that 40 minutes of the film was cut, I don't know if it was the more gorier parts of the film that was promised to us, but I think there was a lot of development cut out, because judging on the theatrical cut this script is underdeveloped! I gave Michelle Williams credit for being pretty good in the movie, and she is, but the relationship between Eddie and her character is extremely underdeveloped, especially when there are like some kind of romantic tension with her and her new man, who is absolutely pointless in this regard. I honestly did not care about Tom Hardy and Michelle William's relationship at all. The relationship with Eddie and Venom also felt underwhelming too. Like the general tension between the two is fine, but Venom turns from a "I wanna wreck things in this world" to "actually this planet is pretty cool I'm gonna save it" in the blink of an eye! Like...where was the development? The movie flies by so fast too! It's barely 2 hours long but it feels a lot more like an hour and a half film. Which does run into a problem with the short development and story arks and especially the third act which flies by very quickly. The tone is also a mess. It's not a straight up horror film, but it does have a ton of psychological elements to it mixed with a campy Marvel movie, it's jarring but it's also hilarious having these two different tones at odds with each other. Like the third act has a song cue right out of an Avengers film and it is so out of place, it's amazing!

If there is one thing I can credit about the script, it's the dialogue. There are some intentionally funny scenes and quips, but for the most part it's poorly written and pretty cheesy and edgy. It was hilarious, and probably unintentional too which makes it better!

Overall the movie is garbage but go in with the right mindset it is a fun movie to rip apart with friends. The jarring tones, underwritten screenplay, and corny edge makes this a hilarious romp! Although I will say that it is also a bit disappointing if Sony kept it as an R-rated movie, developed more on the relationship with Eddie and Venom, and had someone who wasn't a studio hack like Ruben Fleischer and had the tone feel like an Evil Dead movie, then it would be a fun watch AND a legit good movie instead of making a safe movie for a doomed and terrible Spider-Man-less cinematic universe. But I am satisfied with the trash baby that it is!

Also the movie has practically the same story beats as Catwoman and that got me SHOOK!