Movie review: The highs and lows of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’

With “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” director Marc Webb (“500 Days of Summer”) is finally free of the déjà vu that plagued his first Spidey film, which had the studio-mandated misfortune of coming so soon after the Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire trilogy.


The film begins with a flashback detailing the fate of Richard and Mary Parker after dropping off their son Peter to live with his Aunt May (Sally Field, “Forrest Gump”) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, “The West Wing”). While nothing in this portion is particularly illuminating or integral to what follows (despite the filmmakers’ efforts to convince us of it), it is quickly forgotten by the time we get to the first action sequence starring our title character, and it is a doozy in the best way possible.

Webb has seemingly taken the criticism he received from the last film to heart; here at last, is the Spider-Man that the previous entry of the rebooted series had promised (but failed to entirely deliver on): flippant, enthusiastic and, most importantly, fun in all the ways that the last film wasn’t.

From his redesigned costume hewing closer to its classic look to the fantastically-realized acrobatics and witty one-liners (delivered by Andrew Garfield in as far away a manner from Maguire’s monotone as possible)—this is the live-action Spider-Man that fans have been dreaming of.

Plot-wise, much is made of Peter’s promise to his girlfriend Gwen’s (Emma Stone, “Zombieland”) father (Dennis Leary, “Ice Age”) before the latter’s death at the hand of the previous film’s villain, resulting in a couple of awkward conversations, a breakup and more super-powered stalking than even the oft-maligned “Superman Returns” (2007) was criticized for having. Thankfully, here, as in their first go-around, the undeniable chemistry between (real-life couple) Garfield and Stone rises above the story’s deficiencies to form an emotional center that grounds the proceedings amid all the superheroic pandemonium going on around them.

As Spider-Man/Peter Parker, Garfield (“Lions for Lambs,” “The Social Network”) is perfectly cast, having grown visibly more comfortable in his portrayal. Adding to the verisimilitude of Garfield’s performance is his Spidey’s spot-on propensity to go out of his way to save people—you actually feel this superhero cares for the people he’s taken it upon himself to protect. This stands in direct, refreshing, contrast to the wanton destruction and collateral damage wrought by last year’s surprisingly dour “Man of Steel.”

It is this concern for his fellow citizens that has Spidey cross paths with Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx, “Ray”). As the man who will come to be known as Electro—via the kind of accident that seems to happen every other week in these types of stories—Dillon is played by Foxx as a sad sack of a man who manages to be an even bigger loser than he was in the comics. As a villain, though, he exudes genuine menace, especially during a tense stand-off set against the backdrop of Times Square’s myriad LED screens.
 
Also introduced in “Amazing 2” is Parker’s childhood friend, Harry Osborn (Dale De Haan, “Chronicle”), fresh from boarding school and resembling a cross between a young Leonardo DiCaprio and the hip-thrusting Tobey Maguire from “Spider-Man 3.” Osborn arrives in time to see his father (Chris Cooper, playing a variation of his villain from “The Muppets”) die of a hereditary disease which can only be cured with Spider-Man’s blood. Osborn takes over his father’s role as CEO of Oscorp, but boardroom machinations (and hurt feelings) will find the young man engaging the services of Electro to take down our webbed hero.

Simply put, whenever “Amazing 2” lets Spidey do his thing, its succeeds brilliantly with the big screen’s most spectacularly-realized interpretations to date of one of comics’ most outright fun characters. Where it does stumble, however, isn’t so much in its overabundance of bad guys (what was Paul Giamatti even in this movie for?), but in the screenplay’s over-reliance on coincidences and contrivances to get our characters from Plot Point A to Plot Point B. How much of this can be blamed on the contributions of co-screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci  (whose work on “Star Trek: Into Darkness” and TV’s “Lost” relied on similarly-infuriating structures) is debatable. But the notion of all roads leading to Oscorp does tend to get tiring, as does the tendency to stop the film in its tracks for characters to deliver exposition.

While “Amazing 2” does have moments of comic book bliss (and one tragedy), the overall package is one that, given the abundance of behind-the-scenes talent and obvious enthusiasm of its performers, could have been something so much more than what we are ultimately presented with here.

Sadly, no amount of superheroics can overcome bad screenwriting. — VC, GMA News


'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' is now showing in theaters nationwide.