By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

Marvel Comics legend Stan “The Man” Lee gets the documentary biopic treatment in Stan Lee, an officially sanctioned project that is premiering on Disney Plus.

Born Stanley Martin Lieber, and coming of age during the Great Depression in New York City, the film charts how he got his start in comic books (and shortened his name to Stan Lee) working for publisher Timely Comics in the late-1930s, which he eventually helped turn into Marvel in the 1960s.

The film takes us through the main highlights of Lee’s life and career, from working alongside artists like Jack Kirby who co-created Captain America, to his own creation of famous superhero characters such as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the X-Men, which would all become staples of the Marvel brand.

The documentary largely allows Lee to tell this story in his own words, pulling together a voiceover narration from old interviews and previously recorded audio. Visually, the film unfolds though comic book panels, archival footage, and in the film’s most creative flourish, miniature models to show still-life scenes from the past. These miniatures are nicely used to help illustrate scenes from Lee’s life, such as New York during the 1920s or the early Marvel offices.

Director David Gelb (Wolfgang, Jiro Dreams of Sushi) does a fine job of pulling all of these elements together into a fast-paced (the whole thing clocks in at 86 minutes) and accessible package. The film does touch on how Lee often pushed the boundaries of what was accepted within comic books, including drawing diverse characters or writing an anti-drug storyline into Spider-Man, and releasing it without the approval of the Comics Code Authority. But there are certain elements of Lee’s story that inevitably feel glossed over, and the film does come away feeling more like a tribute than a deep dive into his life.

There is so much material that Stan Lee does play a bit like a condensed version of something that perhaps would have been better suited as a longer form series. That said, the film also doesn’t entirely shy away from some thornier aspects of Marvel’s history, such as Lee’s eventual falling out with artist Steve Ditko, who wanted more credit for helping create Spider-Man, viewing his role of drawing the strips as equal to Lee coming up with the character and writing the storylines.

Gelb’s film mainly serves as an enjoyable and inspiring portrait of this towering figure, and how he helped shape comic books and superheroes into what they are today. And for a film made for the same streaming service that houses the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MCU films themselves only take up a small amount of screen time. If fans won’t really discover anything new, this is still a polished, engaging look at how influential Stan Lee really was on the world of comics as a whole.

Stan Lee is available to stream exclusively on Disney+ as of June 16th.