Review: 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' could be the best Spider-Man movie in this or any other universe

You’ve heard the advance buzz, that the animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is the best animated movie of the year, or the best “Spider-Man” movie in years, or the best superhero movie in a long time.

Those are all faint praise for what the movie really is: A groundbreaking, eye-popping, brain-twisting revision of everything we know — or think we know — about animation, superhero movies and the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler. It’s a movie that rewrites the rules of filmmaking while we watch, and marvel (forgive the pun) at what’s before our eyes.

The movie is set in the universe (or universes) of 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which started with teenage science whiz Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) getting bitten by a radioactive spider and discovering he has superpowers — and also discovering that there are a multitude of other universes, each with its own Spider-Man character, whether it’s in anime, film noir or Saturday morning cartoons. (Oh, Spider-Pig, how are you doing, friend?)

This sequel begins not in Miles’ universe (Earth-1610, for those paying attention) but in Earth-65, home of one version of Gwen Stacy, aka Spider-Gwen (voiced by Hailie Stenfeld). She’s trying to keep a version of The Vulture — one from a universe of Da Vinci drawings — from destroying the Guggenheim Museum. She ends up working with some Spider-people from other universes, all while trying to avoid the cops, particularly her father, Capt. Stacy (voiced by Shea Whigham).

After that intro — it’s 20 minutes before we get the movie’s title onscreen, which is cool — we catch up with Miles, who’s trying to balance being good to his parents, police Lt. Jeff Davis (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) and Rio (Luna Lauren Velez), with his secret identity as a Brooklyn crimefighter. Miles even finds out he has a nemesis, called The Spot (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), who creates holes in reality. Their opening fight, bounding around Brooklyn in geometry-shattering ways, is an astonishing bit of animation — and this movie’s just getting warmed up.

From this point, though, I don’t want to say too much, if anything, about the plot. Let’s just say the multiverse is involved, along with other universe’s versions of Spider-Man — with an array of voice acting that includes Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karan Soni, Amanda Stenberg and Jake Johnson. There are other mind-boggling moments, which manage to be out of this world (literally) but track with perfect movie logic.

The directing team — Joaquim dos Santos (“The Legend of Korra”), Kemp Powers (who co-directed Pixar’s “Soul”) and Justin K. Thompson (a production designer on “Into the Spider-Verse” and both “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” movies) — has thought through how each universe looks and moves, so there’s never any doubt where we are in the multiverse. The backgrounds and character designs are painterly in their beauty and color palette.

The screenplay, written by the ace duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller (“The Lego Movie”) and Dave Callaham (who worked on “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), mines the lore of Spider-Man — in so many forms — for maximum effect. It finds the strings of connections across universes, and can build a throwaway joke from the first movie into a defining event with universe-threatening consequences.

There’s so much to talk about in “Spider-Man: Across the Universe,” and so much a critic can’t talk about without spoiling the experience. Knowing what’s in this astonishing, sumptuous movie is power, and with that power comes great responsibility.

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‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’

★★★★

Opens Friday, June 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for sequences of animated action violence, some language and thematic elements. Running time: 140 minutes.