ArcaMax

In the pantheon of notable big-screen comedy duos -- Laurel and Hardy, Olsen and Johnson, Martin and Lewis -- surely room can be found for Venom and Eddie. You know: Venom, the standup Symbiote from outer space, and Eddie Brock, his earthbound straight man. Both of these characters, each played by Tom Hardy, are reteamed in "Venom: The Last Dance," their third -- and, alas, third-best -- movie.

Having left their home base of San Francisco in the previous film, "Let There Be Carnage," the guys hit the road for real in this one, touching down in Mexico ("Hola, bitches!") and Nevada's forever hush-hush Area 51. (The movie has echoes of both the alien-centric "Independence Day," in which Area 51 also figured, and the entirely alien-free "Almost Famous," in an automotive singalong of a classic Brit-rock pop hit.)

There's a lot going on in this movie, and much of it, of course, is CGI. But don't nod off in advance. Some of the computerization -- a stretch of underwater action in a river, especially, and some cleverly alienized animals -- is strikingly imaginative. But there's just too much of this stuff -- especially in relation to the wisecracking V&E interactions, which are of course what we're here for. And the story, cowritten by returning screenwriter and now director Kelly Marcel, could use a humor boost just to cut the old MCU-style super-silliness. (One character, the gloomy Knull, played in a crepuscular murk by Andy Serkis, has actually dubbed himself "Slicer of Worlds," leaving us to wonder exactly how that would work.)

The narrative is the usual superhero boilerplate. Knull is the guy who created the Symbiotes, of which the slobbery, head-munching Venom is everyone's favorite exemplar. But the Symbiotes turned against their creator and imprisoned him in some vaguely unpleasant place, where he grumbles incessantly about escaping so that he can destroy everything everywhere and so forth. To get out, Knull will need to lay his hands on something called The Codex (whatever, whatever), and the only way to do that is to find Venom and Eddie. No questions please.

The story is muffled whenever it relocates to Area 51 -- or to a lab under Area 51, more precisely -- where some sort of Symbiote project is going on. Here we meet hardnosed General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is opposed to Symbiotes, and prissy Dr. Payne (Juno Temple), who digs them. Strickland is a character so thinly written that there's nothing for Ejiofor -- a onetime Academy Award nominee -- to play. And Payne is a colorless cliche -- the sci-fi knucklehead who always wants to "study" the ravening space monsters rather than flatten them in some irreversible way. Not much to play there, either.

All of that said, the picture warms sweetly when a family of hippie UFO buffs, led by paterfamilias Rhys Ifans, arrives in the story (and stays a little too long). And it's good to see Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), the store owner in the first two films, now hitting the slots in Las Vegas and swanning through elaborate dance numbers in penthouse hotel suites.

Unfortunately, despite its modest virtues, the movie is undone by its endless space-monster battles, which are short on rhythm and scale, and more than anything else suggest digital cockroach frenzies. A last dance indeed.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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