Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse review – a dizzying, dazzling ...

Is it possible to equal a film as boundlessly inventive, stylistically bold and effortlessly cool as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Could a sequel ever match that film’s freshness, energy and visual verve? The answer, it seems, is an emphatic yes. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is sublime. There’s not a frame of this rich, kaleidoscopically detailed animation that isn’t dazzling. It takes the basic themes of the first film – adolescent isolation, communication breakdown, the messy, stressful business of growing, of finding your people – and builds whole worlds with them. It’s a dizzying onslaught of ideas and graphic references. It has heart. It even has a font gag.

In the film-making team and in the story there’s a pleasing combination of original talent and fresh blood. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller return as writers and producers, but there’s a new directing team that includes Kemp Powers (Pixar’s Soul). Once again, the story focuses on the bond between fellow Spider-people Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld). But there is a host of new characters, each with their own distinctive look, including Hobie (Daniel Kaluuya), a spider-punk anarchist, drawn with a graphic style that borrows from Jamie Reid’s Sex Pistols aesthetic and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz.

It’s densely plotted, almost overwhelming at times; Daniel Pemberton’s score is an Escher staircase of anxiety. But the soul of the film lies in the tiny human details: like the way Miles, about to gain access to an inner Spider-circle, bounces lightly on his toes – still, at heart, an excited kid waiting for a treat.