Venom

It’s a foregone conclusion that a character drawn as ludicrously proportioned as the pin-headed Venom inspires a film adaptation that abandons all semblance of drama and veers a hard left into slapstick.  Yet it can’t be coincidence that Tom Hardy’s voice in his head, over-enunciating the syllables of Eddie Brock’s name, recalls Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning performance as the Heroin-addled Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s ED WOOD.  Heroin indeed.

During a space expedition to a potentially habitable planet, an evil pharmaceutical company discovers a pus-eyed space parasite that writhes like ferrofluid until it finds a suitable host.  I’m curious about why this excites anyone, since the film doesn’t at all establish a reason for caring about excitable space mold.  The company’s CEO, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), is one of those mustache-twirling villains—the mega-corporate head who all but shoots his own R&D team.  It’s an odd role to put Ahmed in, but it immediately made me think of Dinesh D’Souza.

After stealing data from his girlfriend, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), a lawyer for Drake’s company—the inaptly named Life Foundation—Brock tries to confront Drake, loses his job, gets contacted by a whistleblower scientist (Jenny Slate), goes back to Life Foundation HQ, and gets infected by a wise-cracking parasite.  At this point, the movie can’t get any dumber, but Tom Hardy goes for broke and reaches peak Nicolas Cage (think ALL OF ME meets WICKER MAN).

Hardy is too good an actor for a movie this formulaic.  Here’s a fellow who spent the entirety of DUNKIRK acting with his eyes, now diving head-first into a character who behaves less like a demonic parasite than a bad roommate.  I guess they’re kind of the same thing.  But here the roommates have a kind of sexual tension that culminates in a kiss between Brock and Venom.  Marvel execs take note.  There’s room for opportunity here:  Venom as both bad roommate and the clingy boyfriend who won’t leave.

And that’s why Hardy’s Brock is so watchable, even if the movie isn’t.  He sees his newly found superpowers—imagine a self-repairing Stretch Armstrong—as a burden rather than a gift, and plays a kind of hapless, mumblecore David Dunn (UNBREAKABLE) crossed with Carl Spackler (CADDYSHACK) and Jeff Spicoli (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH).  If these references are tiresome, it’s because the film is both derivative and difficult to explain—even if you knew the context.