Review: ‘Dealing With Dad,’ starring Ally Maki, Hayden Szeto, Peter S. Kim, Dana Lee, Page Leong, Echo Kellum and Megan Gailey

June 2, 2023

by Carla Hay

Cast members of “Dealing With Dad.” Pictured in front row, from left to right: Dana Lee, Hayden Szeto, Ally Maki, Peter S. Kim and Caleb Mantuano. Pictured in back row, from left to right: Megan Gailey, Page Leong and Echo Kellum. (Photo by Steven Lam/1091 Pictures)

“Dealing With Dad”

Directed by Tom Huang

Some language in Mandarin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Milpitas, California, the comedy/drama film “Dealing With Dad” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with a few white people and African Americans) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: Three siblings in their 30s gather at their parents’ home, where their father is having depression issues, and long-simmering family resentments come to the surface.

Culture Audience: “Dealing With Dad” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in bittersweet dramedies about immigrant families, sibling rivalries, and how childhood experiences affect people through adulthood.

Ally Maki and Dana Lee in “Dealing With Dad” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

“Dealing With Dad” is a generally entertaining dramedy about a specific family with universally relatable issues. Some of the jokes are a little corny, but the movie gets better as it goes along. Ally Maki gives an impressive performance as a Type-A perfectionist with daddy issues. “Dealing With Dad” does an overall capable job of balancing family drama and comedy.

Written and directed by Tom Huang, “Dealing With Dad” (which takes place mostly in Milpitas, California) has many of the predictable arguments and squabbles that are usually found in movies about family reunions where family members have long-held resentments and grudges. The family at the center of this story isn’t completely dysfunctional, but most of the family members have problems communicating openly and honestly with each other. They are forced to reckon with many of their issues when the family patriarch becomes bedridden with depression after being laid off from his accounting job.

Jialuo Chang (played by Dana Lee), an immigrant from Taiwan, is cranky and impatient with everyone around him. Jialuo’s self-confidence of being his household’s main financial provider gets a big blow after he becomes unemployed. It’s later revealed in the movie that Jialuo was verbally abusive and sometimes physically abusive to his three children when they were underage. Jialuo currently lives in Milpitas, California, in the same house where he and his wife raised their three American-born children during most of the kids’ childhoods.

Sophie Chang (played by Page Leong) is Jialuo’s often-demanding and judgmental wife, who is also an immigrant from Taiwan. Sophie is openly racist against people who aren’t Asian. She tells her children that she wants them to marry only Asian people. Sophie hides her racism by being smiling and polite to people whom she makes racist comments about behind their backs.

Margaret Chang-Atlas (played by Ally Maki) is an uptight, hard-driving business entrepreneur who likes to be in control of situations. Margaret is actually fearful of disappointing her parents, especially her father. Ironically, Margaret can be just as prickly and difficult with other people as her parents are with her. How much of a control freak is Margaret? There’s a scene in the movie where she and her two brothers are eating at a casual restaurant, and she cuts the food on the plate of the younger brother, as if he’s a helpless child.

Margaret knows her mother doesn’t approve of Margaret being married to an African American musician named Jeff Atlas (played by Echo Kellum), who does not have the type of career that Sophie and Jialuo think is suitable for a spouse. Sophie privately uses the derogatory term “half-breed” to describe Margaret and Jeff’s son Nick (played by Caleb Mantuano), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. But when Sophie is around Nick, she acts like a doting and loving grandmother.

Roy Chang (played by Peter S. Kim) is Margaret’s older brother. He works as a bank manager and is feeling down about his life because his wife Sherry is divorcing him. Roy doesn’t want the divorce and is hoping that he and Sherry can reconcile. He is also sensitive about his body size and gets defensive when his siblings make negative comments about the large portions of food that he eats.

Larry Chang (played by Hayden Szeto) is Margaret’s younger brother. He is 33 years old, a never-married bachelor, unemployed, and currently living with his parents. Larry is a self-described sci-fi nerd who spends a lot of his time and money on collecting sci-fi memorabilia and playing video games. Larry makes a small amount of money by selling his memorabilia at a local comic book/collectible store managed by Aaron (played by Ari Stidham), another sci-fi enthusiast. Larry owes Roy a certain amount of money that is not specified, but it’s enough money that causes Roy to resent Larry.

Jenny (played by Cindera Che) is Jialuo’s younger sister, who lives in Denver, but she goes to Milpitas after hearing about Jialuo’s mental health issues. For years, Jenny has been openly hostile or standoffish to Margaret, who doesn’t know why. During the course of the movie, the reason why is revealed.

Margaret and Roy both live far enough away from their parents that when they both find out that their father is bedridden, Roy and Margaret reluctantly take a plane ride to go to their parents’ home in Milpitas. Margaret’s husband and son don’t go with her. Before this family crisis, Margaret hadn’t talked to her parents in months.

The first half of “Dealing With Dad” is structured and written almost like a sitcom, with a bunch of family members making verbal zingers and lobbying sarcastic insults at each other. It starts to get very repetitive, but not completely boring. Jialuo has become very reclusive, so he is not seen for much of the movie. The three siblings are somewhat relieved that they don’t have to deal with Jialuo’s usual tryannical bossiness, but his wife Sophie causes a lot of drama.

There’s a subplot about Larry reconnecting with a goofy former high-school classmate named Sarah Schumer (played by Megan Gailey), who has recently moved back to the area after serving time in the Peace Corps. Larry has had a crush on Sarah since high school. She has many of the same interests as Larry does, and she likes him, but he is too shy to ask her out on a date.

Meanwhile, a nerdy doctor named Gordon, also known as Gordy (played by Karan Soni), who is a former high-school classmate of Margaret’s, stops by for a house call to treat Jialuo. Sophie is impressed that Gordon is a doctor, so she makes awkward attempts to play matchmaker between Margaret and Gordon, even though neither one is romantically interested in the other. Sophie also tries to set up Larry with a quiet Chinese immigrant named Cai Shi (played by Peggy Lu), who’s about 25 years older than Larry.

Gordon prescribes Zoloft to Jialuo and recommends that Jialuo get therapy for the depression. Jialuo is too proud to accept that he needs this help. The movie takes a much more serious turn when tensions run even higher because Jialou refuses to take the Zoloft. He literally throws the pills across the room. And in one incident, he spits a Zoloft pill in Margaret’s face.

The siblings’ battle to get Jialuo to take his prescribed Zoloft becomes a symbol for the grudges that all three of his children have against him. Margaret has the most resentment toward her father, so she’s the one who fights the most to get him to take the Zoloft pills. Flashbacks to Margaret’s childhood show that Jialuo was the hardest on her, out of all his three children, because he had the highest expectations for Margaret. Miya Cech has the role of Margaret at about 12 or 13 years old.

In one of these flashback scenes, Margaret has a painful memory of Jialuo slapping her hard in the face in front of her softball teammates, after she joyfully told him that she made it onto the softball team. Instead of being happy for her, Jialuo got angry and assaulted her for having “B” grades on her report card. Later, he gave her an apology gift of new softball gloves, which the adult Margaret says are the only signs that she has that Jialuo might have loved her.

“Dealing With Dad” also shows Margaret’s anxiety issues. She has a recurring nightmare that she’s trapped in a narrow hallway that has a tidal wave of flooding that’s about to drown her. Although Margaret likes to put forth an image to the world that she’s got her whole life together, this vulnerable side to her gives the movie more emotional depth. And she’s not a completely sympathetic protagonist, because she has a tendency to act superior to her brothers and other people. It’s a personality flaw that Margaret gets confronted about at one point in the story.

“Dealing With Dad” also has authentic depictions of the dynamics between immigrant parents and their children who were born and raised in the country where the parents immigrated. Jialuo and Sophie want to tightly hold on to their “old school” Taiwanese traditions and have a hard time accepting that their children might not feel the same way. Those traditions include a reluctance to get psychiatric help for mental health issues.

All of the cast members give performances that range from mediocre to very good. The movie is told mainly from Margaret’s perspective, so Maki has the most challenging role, because of the myriad of emotions that she has to convey. The pace of the movie occasionally drags in the middle, but the last third of the film is the best part. Just when you think “Dealing With Dad” might end on an expected formulaic note, it surprisingly shows that, just like in real life, not everyone is going to change annoying personality traits just because of a family reunion.

1091 Pictures/Screen Media Films released “Dealing With Dad” in select U.S. cinemas on April 16, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on May 9, 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTeZXVgv8A

Review: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,’ starring the voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Jake Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez

May 31, 2023

by Carla Hay

Spider-Man/Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation)

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Power and Justin K. Thompson

Some language in Spanish with no subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and in the fictional multiverse called the Spider-Verse, the superhero animated film “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” features a racially diverse cast of characters (black, white and Latino) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: American teenager Miles Morales, who is one of many spider characters in the Spider-Verse, encounters various heroes and villains in the Spider-Verse. 

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of comic book movie fans, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching animated movies that have an inconsistent visual style and a very muddled plot.

Jessica Drew (voiced by Issa Rae), Gwen Stacy (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld), Peter B. Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson) and his daughter Mayday in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation)

Just like a tangled web from a scatterbrained spider, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is a convoluted mess. This overstuffed movie takes too long to define the plot. It’s a barrage of inconsistent visuals that often look like ugly comic-book graffiti. And it’s a huge disappointment as a sequel to 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (based on characters from Marvel Comics), a visually stunning, highly entertaining film that showed tremendous potential as the next great “Spider-Man” movie series. Superhero movies are supposed to tell viewers within the first 30 minutes what the story is going to be about and who the villain is, but the 140-minute “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” fails to deliver those basic elements until the movie is more than halfway done.

“Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” (directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Power and Justin K. Thompson) also commits one of the worst sins of a movie sequel: It’s very unwelcoming to newcomers. People who didn’t see or don’t know what happened in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” will be confused from the very first scene of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” And even if viewers saw and remember “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” they will have their patience tested by how the overly long “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” jumps from one subplot to the next without much explanation or resolution. Characters appear, disappear for long stretches of time, and then might or might not reappear with any meaningful context on what they’re really supposed to be doing in this movie.

In “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Miles Morales, also known as web-slinging superhero Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore), is a student in his last year of high school. Miles is the movie’s central character, and he seems to be just as confused by what’s going on in his world as many viewers will be. Miles (who lives in New York City’s Brooklyn borough) is one of several people or creatures who have a Spider superhero alter ego. In the Spider-Verse, these various Spider iterations can time jump and appear in other universes, depending on if they have the power to do so, or are sent there by someone else. Unlike the teenage Peter Parker in the “Spider-Man” franchise, or even the Miles Morales in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the Miles in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is barely shown in school or interacting with his schoolmates.

That’s not what’s irritating about this movie. What’s irritating about “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is that it’s so enamored with the concept of various Spider beings, it overloads in introducing these characters but doesn’t have much real character development for them. There are moments of wisecracking jokes (the movie’s comedy is best appreciated by teenagers and adults), but these quips don’t make up for the rest of the uninspired plot and dialogue. And the movie’s big climax just drags on and on, like a rambling stand-up comedian who doesn’t know when to get off the stage.

Miles’ main ally in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is Gwen Stacy (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld), a teenager who’s close to Miles’ age and who might or might not be his love interest. Gwen has a superhero alter ego named Spider-Gwen, who was the last person known to see the adult Peter Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson), also known as the most famous Spider-Man, before Peter died. (This death scene is shown as a flashback of Spider-Gwen at Peter’s side when he dies in a massive urban wreckage.) Gwen’s widower father George Stacy (voiced by Shea Whigham), who’s had a rocky relationship with Gwen, is determined to arrest Spider-Gwen, not knowing that his daughter is really Spider-Gwen.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has such a poorly constructed narrative, the only backstory that viewers get about Gwen is her vague voiceover narration in the movie’s opening scene: “I didn’t want to hurt him, but I did. He’s not the only one.” After the flashback of Parker Parker dying in the wreckage, Gwen says in a voiceover: “I never really made another friend after that—except one, but he’s not here.” That other friend, of course, is Miles Morales. But only Spider-Man experts or people who saw “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” will know what Gwen is babbling about in this opening scene.

Gwen is the drummer for an all-female rock trio called the Mary Janes. (The band’s name is a cheeky nod to Mary Jane Watson, who is Peter Parker’s girlfriend in other “Spider-Man” stories.) The beginning of the movie shows the band rehearsing and then Gwen quitting in anger. Why? Don’t expect a good explanation, except she appears to be angry over Peter’s death but she can’t talk to anyone about it. It’s a scene that’s ultimately pointless, like many other scenes in this long-winded film.

After her temper tantrum, Gwen goes home, where she has a bratty attitude with her father, who tells her that the police have gotten a break in the Peter Parker/Spider-Man death case. George says to Gwen: “Too punk rock to hug your old man?” She then quickly hugs him, and all seems to be forgiven. But as soon as you know that George and his police colleagues have made progression in their Peter Parker death investigation, you know what’s eventually going to happen.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” also shows that Miles’ home life is affected by his superhero antics. A lot of time in this movie is spent on repetitive and not-very-interesting subplots about Miles’ parents—Jefferson Davis (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) and Rio Morales (played by Luna Lauren Velez, previously known as Lauren Velez)—getting annoyed and worried because Miles is constantly tardy or absent from places where he needs to be. A running “joke” in the movie is that Miles’ parents keep adding to the number of months that they say Miles is grounded.

Miles pops in and out of a meeting that he’s supposed to have with his parents and his school principal (voiced by Rachel Dratch) to discuss his plans after high school. The principal is worried that Miles might be squandering his potential, since he’s been skipping classes. And there are some racist overtones when the principal says she wants to fabricate a narrative for Miles’ college applications by saying on the applications that Miles (who is Afro-Latino) is a poor, underprivileged kid with a rough childhood. (He’s not. Miles actually comes from a stable middle-class family.) Fortunately, the principal’s awful idea is nixed.

In the meeting, it’s mentioned that Miles wants to go to Princeton University to study physics. Rio gets upset because she thinks New Jersey is too far away from Brooklyn. (It’s not.) And then, Miles is out the door before the meeting is over because he has to attend to some secretive Spider-Man superhero business. His plans for what he wants to do after graduating from high school are never mentioned again in the movie. It’s just a time-wasting scene.

n “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” Miles’ relationship with his parents looks authentic. In “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Miles’ relationship with his parents looks fake and rushed. There’s a very disjointed sequence where Miles is late for a rooftop party that his family is having to celebrate Jefferson getting promoted from lieutenant to captain at the New York Police Department. The death of Jefferson’s thieving criminal brother Aaron, which was shown in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” is treated as an quick afterthought in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Miles introduces Gwen to his parents in this rooftop party sequence, which keeps getting interrupted by Gwen and Miles going in and out of the Spider-Verse.

During this very sloppily told and often visually unappealing movie, other characters show up, disappear, then show up again, and might disappear again, with the movie never clearly defining who some of them are and what is purpose of these characters. A villain who comes and goes with no real significance is Adrian Toomes, also known as The Vulture (voiced by Jorma Taccone), who gets into a battle with Spider-Gwen. Don’t expect the movie to give an explanation of who The Vulture is and where he came from, because it’s never mentioned in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

Miles later thwarts a convenience store robbery by Jonathan Ohnn, also known as The Spot (voiced by Jason Schartzman), a portal-jumping villain character with a black hole for a face and who looks like he’s wearing a white full body suit with Dalmatian patterns. The Spot appears and disappears into portal holes, with no explanation for viewers who aren’t familiar with this character from Marvel comic books. The only clue offered is when The Spot tells Miles, “I’m from your past.”

Other characters who are dropped in and out of scenes are Miguel O’Hara (voiced by Oscar Isaac), a mysterious motorcycle-riding character dressed in a Spider-Man costume; Jessica Drew (voiced by Issa Rae), a no-nonsense, highly trained fighter who happens to be pregnant; and Lyla (voiced by Greta Lee), who is Miguel’s artificial-intelligence assistant. A version of the adult Peter Parker shows up, as a married father of a baby daughter named Mayday, who seems to fill the movie’s quota to have a cute kid character in the movie. A LEGO universe is briefly shown as nothing more than product placement for LEGO.

There are also international versions of Spider superheroes. Hobart “Hobie Brown,” also known as Spider-Punk (voiced by Daniel Kaluuya), is a snarling, sarcastic Brit who seems to be influenced by a 1980s-era Billy Idol. Spider-Punk is the only character who does not have a non-generic personality. Margo Kess, also known as Spider-Byte (voiced by Amandla Stenberg), is an American, openly queer computer expert, whose presence in the movie barely makes a difference to the story. Ben Reilly, also known as Scarlet Spider (voiced by Andy Samberg), is a clone designed to look like Peter Parker. Spider-Man India (voiced by Karan Soni) doesn’t even get his own birth name in the movie, which gives him a brief, goofy appearance that reeks of tokenism.

Some of the movie’s animation is deliberately made to look like unfinished sketches from a comic book. There might be some people who like this visual style, but most viewers of superhero movies want to see consistency in the animation style of movies in the same series. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have almost entirely different teams of screenwriters and directors—and these difference show to the movie’s detriment. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman directed “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which was written by Rothman and Phil Lord. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” was written by Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham.

There are huge parts of the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” that look like an experimental art project gone wrong. The animation sometimes look jagged, unpolished and blurry. As for the movie’s unfocused plot, it looks like it was made only for the type of people who know Spider-Man inside jokes or who religiously look for Easter Eggs in “Spider-Man” visual content. A typical family with children under the age of 10 who see this movie will probably feel alienated by how so much of the film is cluttered and unclear. And it begs the question: “Why mess up such a good thing?”

Not all of the visuals in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” consists of animation. There are a few Spiderverse scenes where people appear as cameos in live-action visuals. Donald Glover has one of these cameos. (In real life, Glover famously campaigned to get the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the early 2010s. Andrew Garfield ended up getting the role.) Another cameo is from sassy convenience store owner Mrs. Chen (played by Peggy Lu), who is a minor character in the “Venom” movies, which are connected to the “Spider-Man” franchise. People who haven’t seen the “Venom” movies just won’t know or care about this Mrs. Chen cameo. These cameos are nothing more than stunt casting and add nothing to the plot.

It seems like “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is trying to be an artsy superhero animated film. The problem is that the “Spider-Man” movie brand was made for a wide variety of people, not just comic-book enthusiasts who are obsessive about Spider-Man “canon,” which in comic-book terms means the story as it was originally presented in the comic books. The movie has an annoying tendency to assume all viewers are going to be Spider-Man experts.

And speaking of “canon,” expect to hear a lot of about “canon disruption” in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Pity any viewer of this steaming pile of pretentiousness who doesn’t have encylopedic knowledge of what is and what is not “canon” in the Spider-Verse. Because yes, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” is a very pretentious animated film that is sure to baffle and disappoint many people who think they’re going to see a continuation of what made “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” so special.

Anyone who’s letting children under the age of 10 watch the very messy “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” should be warned that these children will most likely be bored and/or confused, unless all they care about is seeing bright, splashy visuals on screen. The voice cast members for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” do what they’re supposed to do. But the plot is so jumbled and smug with its fan-service pandering, by the time the end of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” announces that the story continues in “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” (due out in 2024), many viewers will be thinking to themselves: “No, thank you.”

Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation will release “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” in U.S. cinemas on June 2, 2023.

Review: ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage,’ starring Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson

September 30, 2021

by Carla Hay

Tom Hardy and Venom in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”

Directed by Andy Serkis

Culture Representation: Taking place in San Francisco, the superhero action film “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Venom, the demonic alien anti-hero that inhabits the body of journalist Eddie Brock, does battle against a similar creature called Carnage, which inhabits the body of convicted serial killer Cletus Kasady. 

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of comic book movie fans, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” will appeal primarily to fans of star Tom Hardy and people who like silly, over-the-top and predictable action movies.

Carnage (pictured at left) in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

The good news is that “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” isn’t as wildly uneven as its predecessor, 2018’s “Venom.” The bad news is that it’s consistently stupid in its campiness and appalling lack of originality. It’s very obvious that the filmmakers of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” have a “go for broke” attitude about leaning into the unintentional comedy that “Venom” got a lot of criticism for by fans and critics

The prevailing attitude in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (directed by Andy Serkis and written by Kelly Marcel) seems to be: “You laughed at ‘Venom.’ Now, we’re going to be in on the joke and tell the joke so you can laugh with us, not at us.” And there’s nothing wrong with turning this Marvel Comics movie franchise into a quasi-superhero satire or parody. The problem is that “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” doesn’t have an interesting or imaginative story.

Marcel and “Venom” movie franchise star Tom Hardy are credited with coming up with the “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” story that serves as the basis for the movie’s screenplay. Marcel was a co-writer of the 2018 “Venom” movie, which was directed by Ruben Fleischer, who failed to have a consistent tone for the film. In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” Marcel is the only credited screenwriter. She also wrote the 2015 movie “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which means that she has a track record for churning out terrible movies that are ripe for parody.

Every single thing that happens in “Venom” is tiresome and predictable. And the “jokes” are very stale and unimaginative. The visual effects are bombastic and sometimes cheap-looking. And the movie is so enamored with its own bad taste that it keeps going back to the same gags over and over. There’s a recurring joke about chickens that gets tiresome very quickly. Another joke involving a clerk at a convenience store is over-used to the point of boredom.

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is also a uselessly blaring action movie that wants to pretend that being unnecessarily noisy in certain scenes means that it’s somehow proving its worth as an action movie. Loud action scenes are expected in a movie like this one, but there’s too much shouting by people in the non-action scenes. And there’s a character who literally causes tornado-like damage when she shrieks like a banshee.

In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which takes place in San Francisco, investigative journalist Eddie Brock (played by Hardy) is still struggling with the knowledge that he has a human-eating demonic alien living inside of him called Venom. Eddie can usually control Venom by deciding when Venom can appear outside Eddie body. However, when Venom gets too hungry or too angry (which happens a lot), Venom can act of his own free will, which usually involves the destruction of things or people.

Just like in the first “Venom” movie, expect to see Eddie having numerous arguments with Venom. Because people can’t see Venom when Venom is inside Eddie’s body, it often looks like Eddie is talking to himself when he’s really talking to Venom. In the real world, this unhinged persona would have serious consequences on his career as a journalist, since people would question Eddie’s mental health and the ability to do his job well. But since this is a comic book movie, viewers are expected to go along with this unrealistic aspect of the story.

Venom constantly craves human flesh, and Eddie will only allow Venom to eat criminals. Eddie hasn’t encountered any criminals lately, so he’s been feeding a steady diet of live chickens to Venom. In the movie, Venom constantly complains about being tired of eating chickens. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” keeps going back to this questionable well of jokes until it runs dry and becomes cracked to the point of irritation.

Every superhero movie has a villain. In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” the chief villain is Cletus Kasady (played by Woody Harrelson), a convicted serial killer who is awaiting his sentencing while he’s in prison. Law enforcement officials think that Cletus has killed more people than has been proven in court, and they want Cletus to tell them where the bodies are before he gets sentenced. In the media and in the public, people have been speculating if Cletus will get the death penalty or not.

Eddie is doing a story on Cletus, so he goes to the prison to interview him multiple times. Cletus doesn’t give Eddie any useful information, but he does get angry during one of the interviews and bites Eddie hard enough to draw blood. Cletus immediately notices that Eddie’s blood doesn’t taste completely human.

And you know what that means: Cletus has been infected with the same DNA that Venom has. And so, red-haired Cletus finds out that he has a red demonic alien inside of him. That creature is called Carnage. You can do a countdown to the inevitable battle scene between Venom and Carnage toward the end of the film.

In the meantime, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” has some filler scenes involving Eddie’s love life. In “Venom” (mild spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie), Eddie was engaged to district attorney Anne Weying (played by Michelle Williams), but she broke up with him at the end of the movie. Anne became so disillusioned with law enforcement after her experiences with Eddie/Venom, she left the district attorney’s office and began working in the non-profit sector.

In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” Eddie is still nursing a broken heart about Anne, who wants to be on friendly terms with Eddie. They meet for dinner, where she tells him that she’s now engaged to be married to another man. His name is Dr. Dan Lewis (played by Reid Scott), who’s somewhat wimpy and gets nervous easily. He’s exactly the type of person you know is going to get stuck in some battle scenes later in the movie.

Cletus has his own lovelorn woes. In the 1996 flashback scene in the beginning of the movie, it’s shown that teenage Cletus (played by Jack Bandeira), who was a problem child from an abusive home, was sent to live at the co-ed St. Estes Reform School. At the reform school, Cletus met and fell in love with another student named Frances Barrison (played by Olumide Olorunfemi), who is nicknamed Shriek because whenever she gets upset, she shrieks loud enough to cause unnatural destruction. During their romance, Cletus gives Frances a ring and calls her “my angel.”

However, the destruction that Frances has caused is enough to get her sent away to a psychiatric institution for criminals. Cletus is distraught over this separation. Before Frances leaves, he tells her, “They can’t take you away from me! You’re my one bright light!”

In the police van that is transporting Frances to the psychiatric institution, she is being guarded by a young cop with the name tag P. Mulligan (played by Sean Delaney), who foolishly doesn’t have a partner with him as backup. It wouldn’t matter much anyway, because Frances does her shrieking with such force that it causes the the van to crash, and she escapes.

This movie is so sloppily written that it’s mentioned later in the story that most people who knew Frances believe that she is dead, even though her body was never found. It would make more sense to have her described as a missing person. But then again, if Cletus thought she was missing and not dead, he wouldn’t be so heartbroken.

Frances is really alive, of course. As an adult (played by Naomie Harris), she’s being secretly held captive by the government for experiments. Frances is deliberately mute while in captivity, but there comes a point in the movie where she finally does talk. Not that it makes much of a difference, because the dialogue she’s given is absolutely idiotic and forgettable.

Eddie lives near a convenience store. And for some weird reason, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” wants to make the convenience store’s owner/sales clerk Mrs. Chen (played by Peggy Lu), who had a cameo in the first “Venom” movie, into some kind of wisecracking foil to Eddie/Venom, similar to Ken Jeong’s Mr. Chow character in “The Hangover” movies. However, the “jokes” that Mrs. Chen utters just aren’t very good. Everything about the “comedy” in this movie is extremely simple-minded, like something you might see in a children’s cartoon, not a live-action superhero movie where adults are the majority of the audience.

The rest of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” plays out exactly like you’d expect it to play out, because it does exactly what many other mediocre-to-bad supermovies have already done in the story arc and battle scenes. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is like the 2018 “Venom” movie on meth: It’s filled with the loud scatter-brained nonsense, gibberish dialogue and repetitive hyperactivity—resulting in one giant, annoying headache. The pace of the “Venom: There Will be Carnage” doesn’t drag like “Venom” did, but there’s no real suspense either.

Except for Harrelson, none of the actors seems to have any enthusiasm or genuine emotional connection to their roles. Maybe because it’s too hard to get excited when you have to say such moronic lines of dialogue. British actor Hardy (who’s a producer of the movie) looks like he’s going through the motions to collect his financial payout.

And even though Eddie is supposed to be American, Hardy’s natural British accent can occasionally be heard in the dialogue. Hardy has mastered American accents in several of his other movies where he portrayed an American. The fact that he has flaws in his American accent in this movie is an indication that he’s not artistically committed to the Eddie Brock/Venom role, and this “Venom” franchise is probably more about the money for him. Hardy and Williams still have no believable on-screen chemistry together, either as a couple, a former couple, or as friends.

The cop who was with Frances when she made her 1996 escape has now been promoted to detective. (His first name is not mentioned in the film.) Detective Mulligan (played by Stephen Graham) is as generic as generic can be. Detective Mulligan plays a fairly prominent role in the movie, which is so badly written that Detective Mulligan puts himself in many dangerous situations without having a cop partner as a backup. Keep in mind, this isn’t a small-town police force. This is supposed to be the San Francisco Police Department.

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” does not have an end-credits scene, but there’s a mid-credits scene that suggests there will be a movie where Venom will eventually interact with Spider-Man, who is Venom’s nemesis in the Marvel comic books. It would be the first time that Venom and Spider-Man will be seen on screen together in a live-action movie. However, the tone of the “Spider-Man” movies (high-quality action) and the tone of “Venom” movies (low-quality schlock) are so vastly different from each other, it will be a challenge to bring Venom and Spider-Man together in live-action movies without sacrificing some credibility in trying to merge these two very different worlds.

It’s why the “Venom” movie franchise does a disservice to other Marvel Comics-based movies where there’s potential for Venom to cross over into these other Marvel movie franchises. The way that the filmmakers and film studios treat any Venom crossovers into other Marvel movies will be have to be treated just like chefs who have to prepare a meal with incompatible ingredients. Using that meal analogy, for people who want superhero movies that deliver an interesting and creative story, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Columbia Pictures will release “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” in U.S. cinemas on October 1, 2021.

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