The Amazing Spider-Man

Given that Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie hit theaters just about ten years ago, The Amazing Spider-Man can’t help but come off as a repetitive and absolutely needless piece of work that is, for the most part, hopelessly unable to justify its very existence. The narrative, which once again details Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) transformation into the title character, suffers from a pervasive sense of familiarity that’s nothing short of disastrous, as James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent, and Steve Kloves’ screenplay contains virtually all of the beats and plot developments contained within Raimi’s 2002 origin story (eg the death of Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben, Peter’s conflict with fellow student Flash Thompson, etc). There is, as such, never a point at which the viewer is able to work up the slightest bit of interest in the protagonist’s ongoing exploits, which is a shame, certainly, since Garfield generally does a nice job of separating himself from Tobey Maguire’s (admittedly superior) portrayal of the iconic web-slinger. (Garfield’s costars don’t fare quite as well, however, with Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans’ bland work as, respectively, Gwen Stacy and Curt Connors, effectively exacerbating the movie’s irrelevant feel.) Filmmaker Marc Webb’s decision to employ a curiously deliberate pace does, when coupled with an unreasonably overlong running time (136 minutes!), exacerbate The Amazing Spider-Man‘s various problems, and it doesn’t help, either, that the film suffers from an almost astounding paucity of compelling sequences. (There are, in fact, only two real respites from the otherwise tedious atmosphere, Stan Lee’s expected cameo and an incongruously lighthearted scene in which Spider-Man playfully harasses a car thief.) By the time the needlessly frenetic, headache-inducing finale, which feels as though it’d be more at home within a video game, rolls around, The Amazing Spider-Man has definitively established itself as one of the worst comic-book adaptations to come around in ages (ie the movie is nothing less than a cynical cash-grab designed to appeal to one’s inherent fondness for the admittedly charming title character.)

* out of ****