A tone-deaf, uneven and maddeningly dumb clunker that never settles on an identity, all the way to the closing credits.The Venom symbiote requires a perfect match to bond with its host; otherwise, the host is doomed. The Venom movie plays like a midnight horror that has invaded a superhero movie, and while there are some laffs to be had, it's far from a perfect match.Certainly I'm in a minority when it comes to my fellow critics, but I liked "Venom." Hell, if it wasn't for the sloppy and formulaic script, I might have even loved it.An occasionally entertaining misfire that only scratches the surface of what a Venom movie could truly be.It's not clear what precisely we've done to deserve this iteration of Venom and the hilariously goofy movie in which he stars, but it's a mixed blessing worth embracing.Venom is intentionally gross and unintentionally funny, a film that careens all over the place but is sometimes enjoyable in its bizarreness.Toss in characterizations that are threadbare, half-baked and in one instance borderline inexcusable to the point of being offensive and there is precious little about this one that should get anyone excited to see it.The film devotes way too much time to exposition (the first act feels like it goes on for about an hour), but once it gets going it's decent fun.A waste of a perfectly good Tom Hardy.Venom could have brought a certain amount of sitcom silliness to a grimmer, grittier part of this world. But in the end, what might have been a bold and bracing new thing winds up being more of the same.This is a paradox: Venom isn't good-nor so-bad-it's-good-and yet if there had been more of it, and if that more had been a little wilder or gorier, it probably would have been better.It's hard to mess up a car chase up and down the streets of San Francisco and Fleischer certainly doesn't, though at these speeds we should be gasping and laughing instead of just nodding our heads.Mostly bad-bad, with a splash and dash of fun.As a superhero movie, Venom,... is a dismal failure... But as a buddy comedy? Well, that's where Venom really hits its stride.The chief problem with "Venom" is that it never settles on a tone. Is it comedy? Horror? Romance? Drama? Why not try all of them at once?On the Marvel scale of greatness, with 1 being the least pleasing and 10 the most amazing, Venom might be around a 3.5, a 4 if you're in a really good mood."Venom" could become Marvel's version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" -- a camp classic worth mocking again and again.It turns out Venom isn't much different than the alien who starred in NBC's 1980s sitcom ALF: A pushy boor motivated mostly by his next snack.It's an incoherent mess of tones, acting styles and visual effects. And yet it's kind of a hoot.A picture in the running for the dubious distinction of being perhaps the worst Marvel-derived origin story ever. And that includes the odious 2015 "Fantastic Four."