Sometimes a movie comes along that is such an achievement in one area that it overwhelms any and all shortcomings it might have in other areas. Such a film is Into the Spiderverse.

Let me come out and say it right away, the animation of this movie is so far beyond anything else an American digital studio has achieved that it needs to be taught in animation schools. Practically every frame of it is perfect and it’s many stylistic choices, such as visualizing sound effects and internal monologues as a comic book might, enhance its charm rather than distracting from it. If visual appeal were all that counted this would truly be the greatest Spiderman tale ever to grace the silver screen. Alas, while film is a visual medium it is still a storytelling medium and by that measure Into the Spiderverse doesn’t quite stack up.

The fact is, the movie has too many plot threads and doesn’t quite weave them together into a web the way it would like. Spiderverse looks like a simple passing the torch movie at first glance. Peter Parker is Spiderman but he gets killed in a battle with the Kingpin. He passes the necessary information to defeat the Kingpin to a graffiti artist by the name of Miles Morales, who just so happens to have been bitten by a radioactive spider – just like Peter – and tasks Miles with stopping the Kingpin before things get worse. The problem is Miles has no idea how to do that or what kinds of things will be getting worse.

Things get weirder when Miles meets a much older version of Peter Parker with a slightly different hair color who has retired from Spiderman life and turns out to be from an alternate dimension. Miles enlists alternate Peter for help, although after hearing his backstory he’s not entirely sure this is the best source of advice he could find. Still beggars can’t be choosers and the two set off to foil the Kingpin. It turns out the villain is building an interdimensional bridge and the two have to close it. To do that they wind up enlisting the help of Spider Gwen, Spider Noir, Spider Ham and Cyber Spider, four other alternate dimension people who also got bitten by radioactive spiders and have their own backstories.

Oh, and Miles’ uncle? Who taught him how to paint and is also secretly a supervillain and thus on the outs with his brother, Miles’ dad who is a cop? Turns out he’s working for the Kingpin and that makes things even more complicated. Miles also needs to understand his powers and adjust to a new school and generally try and fit in to teen life.

Follow all that?

No, you probably didn’t. The movie doesn’t help matters either, moving at a breakneck pace and rarely stopping to explore anything with any depth. To be fair to the film, the classic Spiderman themes of power, responsibility and family, embodied in Miles, and his father and uncle, get a good amount of time and development. These parts of the story are deep and leave an emotional impression. But the rest of it gets less development and often comes off as rushed or flat. In particular, the alternate Peter is rushed and the other Spiders are flat, one note characters. And as a group the Spiders are kind of muddled, sharing one basic backstory and very similar powersets. The film comes off as very, very unfocused.

And it’s the worst kind of unfocused. There’s nothing wrong with any of the ideas Spiderverse offers. It just can’t stop and develop many of them enough for them to feel important. And those ideas it does develop are strong enough to tell me that if it had focused on two or three of its ideas it would have been great instead of just good. Honestly, I’d have rather had a movie with Miles, the Alternate Spiderman and the Kingpin with just Miles’ uncle as an employee rather than the much more overstuffed film that’s on offer. Into the Spiderverse wants too much of a good thing and, much like the DCEU that tried to cram years of franchise building into a few films, it winds up a worse product than it could have been as a result.

Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it and enjoy it. It’s good execution on great themes and it is a joy to behold. It’s just not everything it could have been – or the greatest film outing for Spiderman.