Eddie Brock/Venom is such a cool comic book character, and I'm a big fan of the source material. In the comics, he's a reporter with a grudge against Spider-Man who forms a union with a morphing alien "symbiote" that shares his hatred of the Webbed Wonder. Together, they're "Venom", at first a wrathful villain and later a monstrous anti-hero who protects the marginalized in NYC.

Unfortunately, this film is way too vanilla -- and too goofy -- to do the Venom character justice. Part of that is the PG-13 rating, which kicks into high gear anytime a character would plausibly drop an f-bomb but says a lesser expletive instead. More importantly, it results in painfully obvious cutaways whenever the alien symbiote gets a hankering for human flesh (and heads).

The other issue is the humor, which is now a certifiable part of the Marvel Movie Formula. When the alien starts talking to Brock and cracking jokes, making fun of his love life, and being forcefully ironic at "hilariously inopportune" times, I just had to shake my head. The comic books had it right, where the creature knew Brock's innermost fears, secrets, and desires, and would sometimes manipulate him or lead him towards questionable actions. Instead, what we have here is Deadpool-lite in alien form, all silly jokes and goofball humor when real gravitas is called for. Like many superhero movies, this one is ashamed of its source material and so feels it must cloak it with humor. That works in Thor: Ragnarok, but it's facile here.

The movie's story is also too rote, too standard, too vanilla. It's loosely based on some of the comics from the 90s, but it's so un-involving; you'll see all the barely curved "twists" coming a mile away. It's hardly compelling, mostly acting as the glue for the action setpieces which unfortunately don't last long enough. I wish this film was crazier, more bombastic, even stupidly so like the first (and only watchable) Michael Bay Transformers movie. The plot of "Venom" is also suspiciously similar to 2008's "Incredible Hulk" with Edward Norton.

The acting is decidedly average. There isn't much to Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock, a plain-jane everyman whose supermodel good looks never allow him to look as disheveled as his character is supposed to be. Michelle Williams is boring as Brock's ex, on whom is he is fixated, and Riz Ahmed is one of the most dull villains I've seen on screen in awhile. Edit all of his scenes and put them in a supercut on YouTube; you'll cure someone's insomnia.

I'm a Venom fan, who reads Venom comics and just wanted a fun, bloody good time with bone-tearing symbiote action. Unfortunately this movie was too tame, and too un-interesting, to be the kind of turn-off-your-brain popcorn flick it wanted to be.