The Venom film series is one of the weirder phenomena to emerge from the superhero movie boom. Based on the popular Spider-Man villain-turned-antihero, the Venom movies rip up the Marvel Studios playbook and take an early 2000s approach to superhero cinema, stripping their source material to its most basic ingredients and isolating them from the context of their comic book universes. Their relatively small scope and total lack of pretense make them a change of pace from their cousins from DC or Marvel proper, but while that is theoretically refreshing, the resulting films are not actually any better, and Venom: The Last Dance is no exception. True to form for this trilogy—which supposedly concludes here—the brainless and disjointed Last Dance skates by on star Tom Hardy’s charm and a few good gags.

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VENOM: THE LAST DANCE ★ (1/4 stars)
Directed by: Kelly Marcel
Written by: Kelly Marcel
Starring: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach
Running time: 109 mins.

Hardy returns as Eddie Brock,........

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