Well, not too far from home. In fact, we are on pretty familiar ground, despite Spider-Man now going on a hormonally charged school trip to Venice, Prague and other European cities whose national governments have given this film tax breaks.
For all these exotic novelties, this is a very mainstream Marvel picture, culminating in the traditional CGI damage to tourist landmarks in the time-honoured final battle-spectacular. A new character has been perfunctorily added in the form of Mysterio (Gyllenhaal) and the film is certainly nowhere near the envelope-pushingly surreal ambition of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, from last year.
But Tom Holland is still very winning as Spidey, still living at home with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) who is embarrassing him with her love life and by referring to her nephew’s spider sense as “Peter tingle”. J Jonah Jameson makes a brief, horrible return as a gruesome Alex Jones-style pundit, and Peter Parker has all sorts of dramatic new problems (it’s important to stick around for those post-credit stings).
