“Venom: The Last Dance” review: A CGI mess that Tom Hardy can’t save

For three films now Tom Hardy has welded Jekyll and Hyde together into a strange and slimy one-two punch. In a Marvel Universe full of alter egos hiding hidden superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn't transform. He shares his body with an inky alien symbiote (voiced by Hardy with a baritone growl) that sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots out a tentacle or two, and always cheerfully punctuates Eddie's inner monologue.

They were messy, almost intentionally bad films throughout, but Hardy's performance was strangely convincing One-body buddy comedy. It's one thing to throw on a cape and jump into the sky. It's another thing to manically run through the desert barking an alien voice, like Eddie's inner alien does in the new one “Venom: The Last Dance” “Engacing your core,” “Nice horsey,” and “Tequila!”

The biggest dichotomy of these films, however, isn't the separation between Eddie and the symbiote. It's the contrast between Hardy's funny, sometimes strangely touching performance and all the CGI mess around him. There were moments of fun in the first two films, but that's the case with “The Last Dance,” which hits theaters Thursday the swan song For this spin-off, half-finished franchise, it confirms that the Venom films never quite got along.

In “The Last Dance”, Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two “Venom” films, takes over the directing role, succeeding Andy Serkis (“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” 2021) and Ruben Fleischer (“Venom” 2018) . We meet Venom (the fusion of Eddie and his alien soulmate) again in Mexico, where they are on the run from the law. But a new threat is also emerging.

The film begins with Knull (Serkis), the symbiote creator, sending aliens from a disgusting, distant and dark corner of space to retrieve a “codex” in Venom's spine that, if obtained, will lead to the destruction of humans and humans would lead symbiotes.

For me, the last thing a “Venom” movie needs is a typical comic book-style doomsday plot. The best sequences in the first two films are no more complicated than Venom's craving for lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes fit his twisted comedy better. The touchstone for these films should not be the Marvel playbook, but old episodes of The Odd Couple.

Instead, we are thrown into a rather boring environment of Area 51, where an elaborate laboratory led by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) investigating the symbiotes it has captured with the help of a military detachment led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor, loan) gives the film more weight than it deserves). As soon as the alien insect creatures arrive in search of the codex, there is a lot of running and fighting, including a UFO-loving family in a VW bus (Rhys Ifans plays the father). The ensuing battle threatens, as the title promises, to ultimately divide Venom.

But the promise of the Venom series is actually that the mainline Marvel stuff will be less intrusive here. This is a B-movie section of the multiverse with little appetite for solemnity, nobility, or two-and-a-half-hour running times. They can feel a bit like discarded imitations, which is both their appeal and their frustration.

I kept wishing that the surprisingly lifeless “The Last Dance” would step back far from its save-the-world plot (and its CGI) and focus more on its strongest effect: Hardy's split personality. If this is supposed to be a last hurray – which is admittedly a dubious idea for anything even remotely Spider-Man related – it's a shame we never saw more of Venom in daily life. Eddie is a journalist, after all. One can only imagine how he and the symbiote might have debated more pressing concerns than the fate of the universe, like Oxford commas.

“Venom: The Last Dance,” a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.