This weekend the kids and I went to the movies together and saw “Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse” and Y’ALL. I absolutely loved that movie. Was it a perfect movie? No, it had a few faults. But the emphasis is on the word “few.”
What was fantastic?
The Voice Casting
I loved every single cast member they chose for the movie. One was surprising and I was at a complete loss until I saw the cast listing at the end credits. The other I knew from the moment I heard the voice and thought, “Wait, that person is in this? I had no idea!”  Shameik Moore is perfectly cast as Miles Morales, a young man living in a Peter Parker world, but finds himself with the same spidey senses after getting bit by a radioactive spider of his own. Moore plays Morales with the same earnestness as Tom Holland in the live-action version. Jake Johnson as the alt-Peter Parker is hilarious and perfect for the Spider-man experiencing a bit of an early mid-life crisis in his own world.
The Comedy
This movie isn’t necessarily a comedy, but the funny bits were exactly that: funny. I laughed out loud several times during the movie, and loved how the comedy was so perfectly woven into the fabric of the story.
The Animation Style
This will be listed in both the fantastic and imperfect. Perfect because I was blown away by the amazing animation of this movie. It will HANDS DOWN win several Oscars because this kind of animation has never been done before, to my knowledge. It was truly groundbreaking in many ways and at many points during the movie I just sat there in awe over the tremendous achievement in animation.
What was imperfect?
The Length of the Movie
I have to admit that as much as I enjoyed this movie (and let me stress again – I LOVED IT) I do think the movie could have been 10-15 shorter. About 2/3rds of the way through, I found my mind wandering. “Do the kids have any homework this weekend?” “Should I bake another batch of cookies tonight?” My mind didn’t wander during any important scenes, but it wandered enough that I questioned whether the editors of the movie got too carried away by the sublime animation and kept scenes in that didn’t need to be in the movie.
The Animation Style
About halfway through I leaned over to CootieGirl and whispered, “Did we accidentally come into a theater showing the movie in 3-D?” She said no. But I was convinced we were watching a 3-D version because many, many shots of the movie had a pink/blue separation on the background, while the center of the frame was perfectly clean. I thought I was going crazy. And I’m not the only person that felt that way – I texted a co-worker of mine, another movie buff, when the movie was over and the first question he asked was “Did you see it in 3-D?” I said no, and his response was, “Neither did I, but I swear the whole time I thought it was in 3-D because of how blurry it was.” Yep, same experience here. CG explained that the movie was trying to simulate the imperfect ink that is sometimes found in physical comicbooks. A nice theory, but still a nitpick that took me out of the movie several times. So while the animation was gorgeous in every way, if they make a second one I hope they tone down that particular “imperfect ink” aspect.
But even with it being 2-3 scenes too long, and having slightly flawed animation techniques in some scenes, it was still a fantastic movie and one worth all of the accolades it is getting. I think this is now my favorite Spider-man movie, with “Homecoming” a distant 2nd. And this was hands down one of my favorite movies of the year and one I almost definitely will try to see on the big screen again at some point. I’ll also be buying that one on 4K Blu-Ray as well. I’d be a fool not to.
