Critic Reviews

As the film progresses, it consistently escalates the stakes and scale of its action, which doesn’t devolve into incomprehensible CG murk as it hurtles toward the climax.

Venom: The Last Dance shows what happens when you let a perfectly cast actor and a director with a lot of affection for the character run wild in a world of Marvel superheroes. You get a movie that's a little weird, a lot silly, and full of fun.

It's a singular thrill to see how deftly Hardy blends weird comedy, genuine pathos, and even pseudo-homoerotic undertones into the kind of performance that would win Oscars if it weren't housed within such a deeply unserious, commercial film product.

If this truly is the pair’s big-screen goodbye, at least it ends on a fittingly wacko note of pure, unadulterated sentimentality.

Venom: The Last Dance is dopey and silly and filled with familiar stock characters and well-worn tropes, but it’s almost never ponderous.

This “Last Dance” may be shaggy, silly and even a little bit stupid — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially when it’s winking so hard at its own genre play.

Hardy brings sufficient charm (and witty voice work) to his symbiote-inhabited character’s internal battle between id and superego to make each entry diverting enough, even if they leave little aftertaste. And so it goes with Venom: The Last Dance, which caps the trilogy by going gleefully out on its own.

As you watch “The Last Dance,” the film obliterates any distinction between shooting the works and jumping the shark and just saying, “WTF, let’s do it!”

It’s hard to say how these films will be remembered in the grand scheme of comic book history, but, with The Last Dance, we can at least be reminded that sometimes they actually managed to have fun with these things.

Hardy fans keen for a laugh will lap it up and forgive the slightly incomprehensible plotting, while those who just want a break from reality can happily chuckle at a comic book (anti)hero who is uncommonly free from the navel-gazing that afflicts bigger names of the genre.