"Across the Spiderverse" - Review

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is living as Spiderman in his Universe, trying to juggle his life as a superhero with that of a teenager. However, he is swept up into an adventure when Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), his counterpart from another parallel universe, comes to his world once more. Though told to stay out of it, he has nothing better to do than to beat up aspiring supervillain "The Spot" (Jason Schwarzmann) and get in trouble with his sweet as pie dad Lt Jeff Morales (Bryan Tyree Henry, always welcome) and sassy but competent mother Rio (Luna Lauren Velez, whom I'm glad has recovered from "Dexter") - so he finds himself thrust into a multi-universe spanning adventure, meeting various other Spiderman along the way...

The animation is spectacular, I shall start there.
As expected, the creative, wild, weird use of this kind of imagery is nothing short of spectacular. A version of "The Vulture" from Renaissance Italy shows up, entirely in papyrus and sketchbook drawings (an illustrated contrast to the world he has entered) - coincidentally a better version of "Morbius" than "Morbius" - one moment, whilst Gwen Stacy's conversations with her father are done as living mood boards, the atmosphere and colours around her leaking out and changing and morphing to reflect the characters and who they are (culminating in an excellent draining use at the end, and her father being shown with a pink tie in his otherwise black and white attire); and a particular favourite part of mine was a villain being done as pen and pencil drawings at first, then literally developing into an all absorbing, morphous oil painting style.
It's stunning.
It's also a bit much, it's an utterly overwhelming celebration of animation and animation for animation's sake, which I loved but was feeling exhausted by. Do not take any overwhelmed autistic kids or relatives to this, I'm serious.
It thrives in moments of silliness and wild mayhem (a chase invlving literally scores of Spider-Folk is absolutely the highlight, and I lost my shit at "Peter Parked-Car"), and is stuffed to the brim with references and cameos and jokes. It stumbles with its reliance on them in some cases ("the power of the Multiverse in the palm of my hand", "Hello Peter...") but has a rapid fire pace and adoration of the source material. Where "No Way Home" was the death of art and a vampiric state of unlife, this feels like a belt of hand grenades unleashed in a paint factory one after the other by a bunch of comic book addicts.
It's exhilirating to watch.
But...
I was waiting for an emotional impact, a gut punch or a plot which never came together, unlike other efforts like "The Lego Movie" (though there is a fun use OF Lego in it), "The Mitchells and the Machines" and "Kubo and the 2 Strings". Though there are some fun moments (the idea of "canon" and the Spiderman mythos being something binding and unyielding and the be shaken off and ignored was interesting) and the scenes with Gwen and her dad and Miles and his parents are the ones which come closest to soaring; the film flags in the middle, and never reaches the emotional heights I wanted or it was aiming for.
The Indian-inspired sequence is an unedeniably fun time, but does pad the runtime, and by the time Oscar Isaac arrives (though Papa is MOST welcome), it only then feels like the plot is coming into its own, belatedly. Still, the madness and creativity keep it going.
It's still a marvellously pretty and funny and engaging film, with a gag for every kind of fan.
Daniel Kaluuya steals the show.