海角社区官网

Starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, Ron Cephas Jones, Michelle Lee, Melora Walters and Scott Haze. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. 112 minutes. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere. 14A

At some future gala event where Tom Hardy is being feted for his incredible acting career, the clip from Venom will be the one that gets the audience laughing.

The movie just seems so weirdly out of place for an actor known primarily for his dramatic work, in serious films such as Dunkirk, The Revenant and The Dark Knight Rises.

What he鈥檚 doing in Venom is a bit like what Bob Hoskins did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as a real person playing opposite scene-stealing cartoon characters. The difference is Roger Rabbit was a comedy and Venom is a thriller about icky aliens with giant teeth and ravenous appetites who invade Earth and munch skulls.

Or is it? Venom isn鈥檛 just a hot mess, it鈥檚 a boiling one. Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) and his screenwriting co-conspirators can鈥檛 reconcile whether they鈥檙e remaking Invasion of the Body Snatchers (just one of the film鈥檚 innumerable sci-fi steals) or concocting a buddy comedy out of a guy inhabited by a bossy alien parasite with a Darth Vader voice. They get points for moxie, if not consistency.

We can鈥檛 even be sure where this film resides in that vast bucket of cash known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Evidently just outside of it, since it鈥檚 been declared an orphan by Marvel Comics soothsayers, despite a connection to Spider-Man and a cameo by Marvel icon Stan Lee in a role credited as 鈥渄apper dog walker.鈥�

But at least Hardy knows what he鈥檚 about, which is taking the piss out of superhero/supervillain conventions that have gone long past stale and reached mummification. His presence alone keeps Venom from being an unwatchable disaster, as the film occasionally approaches amusement, not always on purpose.

Hardy鈥檚 character Eddie Brock is a scruffy crusading journalist, who moved from New York to San Francisco to be with Anne (Michelle Williams), his out-of-his-league fianc茅e. Eddie roars around on his motorbike, like Meat Loaf in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reporting on how the Little Guy is being put down by The Man.

He鈥檚 the last dude you鈥檇 expect his editor would pick, although he does so anyway, to write a puffball profile of Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). Drake is a soulless Silicon Valley tech zillionaire who鈥檚 like a cross between Elon Musk and the killer yuppie from Aliens. He鈥檚 engaged in a diabolical experiment to bond human DNA with the oozing alien 鈥渟ymbiotes鈥� he brought back to Earth from a distant planet, because he鈥檚 fed up with his fellow Earthlings, or something like that.

Things aren鈥檛 exactly going according to plan. One of the symbiotes, called Venom, escapes from the lab and takes up residence within Eddie, declaring that they make a good fit because Eddie鈥檚 a loser and so is Venom, back on his home planet.

The two form a bickering alliance as Eddie uses his Venom-fuelled superpowers to try to stop Drake and his minions, while at the same time keeping Venom from biting the heads off random humans. They strike a deal that Venom can only eat bad people, although since the movie is rated 14A instead of R 鈥� and how I wish they鈥檇 gone for the adult version 鈥� the camera cuts away just as heads are being consumed.

The picture gets increasingly sillier as the pace gets ever more frantic, especially after a second hungry symbiote enters the scene. The movie also looks like hell, with bog-level computer effects and washed-out colours resembling those of a 1998 sci-fi movie on a VHS tape that鈥檚 been left out in the sun.

Darned if Hardy doesn鈥檛 go for the gusto, though, and he鈥檚 no stranger to playing demented twins, as he previously demonstrated in the killer-bros act that was Legend. He鈥檚 having a great time arguing with Venom, even if we aren鈥檛 always in on the joke.

That future Hardy celebration I predicted up top? The audience will be laughing at the Venom clip; Tom Hardy will be smirking.