Your friendly millennial Spider-Man

So one thing the new millennial Spider-Man has hidden somewhere on his high-tech Spidey suit is a pocket to carry a cellphone. New webslinger Tom Holland keeps reaching for it while spinning around the city in Spider-Man: Homecoming, taking calls from his nerdy high school pal Ned (played by Fil-Am Jacob Batalon). It’s just one of the ways this reboot of Spider-Man goes forward by taking our hero back — to high school days, in fact.

We first saw young Brit Holland appear as Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War, assisting the Avengers during a particularly divisive battle scene. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), it turns out, had been eyeing this kid’s superhero potential, but in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Stark’s not exactly Dad of the Year, not even Mentor of the Year. There’s good comic patter in this not-particularly-nurturing superhero relationship. (Also amusing is the return of Avengers director Jon Favreau’s deadpan Happy Hogan, Stark’s driver/assistant, and a brief but perky bit by Gwyneth Pultrow as Pepper Potts.)

Newcomer director and co-writer Jon Watts goes for a lighter tone here, bringing it all back to high school, and it helps kick the franchise out of the too-serious direction both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s webslingers had taken it, moving it into something loose and fun. For once, we skip the “origins” story here: we’ve already seen Parker get bitten by a radioactive bug and gain superpowers (twice); let’s move on.

Spider-Man: Homecoming gains comic energy by focusing — a lot — on Parker’s dorkiness (yes, he’s even dorkier than Maguire). He’s likely to run out of “web fluid” while chasing a villain and find himself dashing across suburban lawns on foot to get to his destination (one amusing bit juxtaposes his stumbling dash with Ferris Bueller’s in that old John Hughes movie). In another scene Spidey thinks he’s stopping a car thief by web-thumping the guy’s head against the door; turns out the guy was only trying to unlock his own car.

We also get comical interjections from a stolid Captain America (Chris Evans), shown intermittently in a public service video at Parker’s school telling kids about the “awkward physical changes” that make teens want to break the rules (stick around after the first post-credits teaser for a second teaser… if you have the patience, that is). One of Parker’s awkward changes is his crush on love interest Liz (Laura Harrier), a secret he shares with pal Ned, who accidentally stumbles on Parker’s other secret — that he’s really Spider-Man. “Can I be your ‘Guy in the Chair’?” a wide-eyed Ned pleads. He means the spy sidekick who sits in front of a bunch of computer terminals and feeds vital info to the hero as he fights crime. (BTW it’s a big step forward to have a Filipino sidekick in a Marvel movie, albeit a geeky one.) Meanwhile, Parker is trying desperately to keep his identity hidden from Aunt May (a cougar-ish Marisa Tomei); suffice to say the circle of trust dramatically widens by the end of the movie.

As with many teen movies, this is also a tale of competing mentors. Which will influence Parker’s path in life? Stark is one mentor, leading Parker along but also keeping him on a tight leash; the Watts script shows how Stark’s relationship with his own dad makes him miserly with praise for Parker, dispensing sarcastic witticisms instead. (Some of the quip-friendly energy of Avengers movies surfaces here, and it juices things up.)

The other mentor in this tale is Michael Keaton’s aggrieved Adrian Toomes, a Queens-based salvage operator who stashes away fallen UFO material before it’s scooped up by Stark Enterprise’s recovery crew, and secretly develops his own arms sales business on the side. His ultimate creation is a lethal suit he dons as The Vulture.

Keaton’s another Spidey villain who’s morally ambiguous; circumstances have driven him to drastic actions, and Keaton brings to his Toomes a blue collar authenticity: he’s the kind of guy who’s fed up with rich fat cats taking away his toys and his livelihood; with his narrowing gaze and lethal intensity, Keaton brings his usual edginess to the party. He can go from Jack Nicholson smile to hooded menace in a heartbeat — one actor who’d be equally adept playing both Batman and The Joker.

There are decent action scenes (a Washington Monument rescue stands out, plus an unnerving crisis on the Staten Island Ferry) and even the final showdown is not too drawn-out. But what really makes this Spider-Man reboot click is a pop consciousness that’s been absent in most of the sequels, something vital to the original Sam Raimi-directed hit. There are in-jokes and bits of marginalia packed in every frame, something for fans to geek out on, but also engineered to appeal to a millennial audience lacking the patience for, say, the meditative maturity of Logan. Peter Parker’s only 15, after all.

Also of note in these days of government surveillance and hacking is the emphasis on Stark’s cutting-edge spying equipment, embedded in Parker’s new-and-improved Spider costume. Stark has always danced on the edge of moral relativism, justifying his company’s heavy-handed security role when necessary. The self-satisfied billionaire has pushed government to create the amusingly titled U.S. Department of Damage Control, the outfit that drives Toomes out of business and sets his rancor in motion. Here, Stark is once again taken aback by the unintended consequences of his actions, and actually makes the relatively “small potatoes” Toomes seem sympathetic.

Holland, who seems to fit the role better than Garfield did, excels at stammering, high-pitched patter, reminding us how green he is. He’s Spider-Kid, after all, not yet Spider-Man. In the meantime, he has to decide between fitting into the major league Avengers orbit, or else carving out his own identity in the ‘hood. It’s a dilemma most millennials find themselves facing before their quarter-life crisis.