At its core, "Venom" is the story of Tom Hardy making friends with an intelligent goo from outer space. That earns some points for weirdness. Sadly, the movie as a whole is not bold enough to fully embrace its weirdness, constantly undercutting the inherent darkness and brutality of the Venom character with cheesy humor and tired superhero movie tropes.

There are some things that work okay in this movie, though none work exceptionally well. The cast is maybe its strongest asset, but makes the uninspired script all the more annoying. Seeing Michelle Williams, an amazing actress who has been incredible in almost everything I ever saw her in, be reduced to "the girl" is saddening. Riz Ahmed, though I admire his being cast as the mad scientist character in theory, is very believable as the scientist but could have been a lot madder. And Tom Hardy is clearly trying to give Eddie Brock some dimensionality, but in some scenes, it seems like he's not taking this whole thing very seriously. I can't blame him.

The script to a superhero movie doesn't need to be devoid of any clichés or familiar tropes, but if it employs them in such a liberal manner as in "Venom," there needs to be some self-awareness in it. Ruben Fleischer seems like the perfect director to make a script like this one work, because "Zombieland" was a very self-aware movie, and on top of that, it had good sense of character and even drama, in spite of its inherent silliness. But for some reason, he can't do the trick for "Venom." I could forgive the film for its other flaws if he had played it more for camp, but as it is, the movie seems like an unintentional parody. You might enjoy it on that level.

Much of the dialogue, especially in the first half, is filled with cheesy one-liners and clichéd jokes that, while they did get a few chuckles from me, it was mostly for the wrong reasons. There is a particularly painful scene of Eddie Brock embarrassing himself in a fancy restaurant that reminded me of early-2000s mainstream comedies in the worst possible way. Overall, although a few of the funny scenes in the film are genuinely entertaining, it's mainly because of the talented actors in the piece and the details they bring to the table. But generally, the jokes in "Venom" more often fail than they don't.

Another aspect of the film that could have redeemed some of its narrative and tonal flaws is the action. But here lies maybe the biggest weakness of the film: there is not that much action in it, and what little we get is awfully staged and edited. Even during the one-on-one fights in the first act, the director fails to make the stunts look like Tom Hardy is actually doing them -- which he might have, in which case this flaw is all the more unforgivable. Later, when the action goes bigger, we are treated to an atrocious chase sequence in which the filmmakers completely fail to give us any sense of location, so all we see are random shots of cars, faces, and streetlights, with no indication as to where those things are in relation to our main character. And for the finale, they decide to pull out every tired superhero movie cliché in the book. I could list them, but that might count as a spoiler, though if you've seen any superhero movie in the last ten years, suffice it to say, you will not be surprised by anything in the last 20 minutes of "Venom." Or rather, the last 40 minutes, because the credits sequence alone is 20 minutes long, during which the filmmakers saw fit to give us an almost comically formulaic mid-credits scene (if you consider the fact that the movie has a mid-credits scene a spoiler, you might enjoy the last fight scene) and an ad for an upcoming kids' movie. Classy.

Although I did not like "Venom," it should be noted that I did have fun watching it. It is, like "Suicide Squad" two years ago, an entertaining trainwreck, and for that matter, it might even be one of those cheesy blockbusters that might be redeemed in couple years' time. But today, it feels very derivative and uninspired.