Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Amazing Spider-Man 2/Rated PG-13/Dir. by Marc Webb/Columbia Pictures

For over a decade, an unwritten Hollywood law has been, "every summer must begin with a Superhero movie."  I'm not sure what the penalty for breaking that law has been, but only three summer movie seasons since 2002 have started with something other than men in spandex fighting CGI bad guys.  So here we are.  Another first weekend in May and another superhero movie.  This time it's the sequel to the pleasant, if unremarkable The Amazing Spider-Man, the creatively titled The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  The good news is that it doesn't land in the lowest level of comic book hokum.  The bad news is that it's the weakest summer kick off movie since 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The characters in TASM2 are dealing with all the same issues they had to deal with in the Sam Raimi series.  There is still a city-wide debate in New York about whether he's a help or a menace.  Aunt May (Sally Field) is still struggling to deal with finances in the wake of her husband's murder, in addition to trying to figure out why her nephew's door is always locked and he always seems to be out of breath and dirty.  Peter Parker (again winningly played by Andrew Garfield) is still trying to balance loving a girl, in this series it's Gwen Stacy (the always great Emma Stone), and avoiding her so he can keep her from getting hurt by his web-slinging exploits.  Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) is still having daddy issues, except this time it's a debilitating disease that turns his skin green that he's inherited instead of severe mental issues.

The villain, Electro (Jamie Foxx), is of the "somewhat off, but nice person falls in a vat of chemically imbalanced (fill-in-the-blank) and somehow fuses with it becoming super-powered and suddenly evil" variety.  This time it's a electrical engineer who is saved by Spidey and becomes obsessed with him, imagining they're best friends.  After an accident involving electrocution and a dip in a vat with genetically altered electric eels, he becomes Electro, sort of a combination of Dr. Manhattan and the Electric Gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch.  (warning:  light spoilers until the end of the paragraph)  The motivations of this character are the most hollow this side of a Joel Schumacher Batman movie.  You see, Electro loves Spider-Man until Spidey's face replaces his on the Times Square jumbo-tron.  Yep.  "You're my hero!  You saved my life and I will be eternally in your debt and.....wait a minute.  You just upstaged me.  Die!  Die!  Die!" 

In addition, there is a lot of film time devoted to uncovering the mysteries of the disappearance of Peter's parents.  The mysteries are solved, including an opening sequence that shows precisely what happened after they left Peter with Uncle Ben and Aunt May, but the answers are not weighty enough to justify the amount of time spent searching for them.

The best thing about this film, much like it's immediate predecessor, is the chemistry between the leads, real-life couple Garfield and Stone.  These two are probably the only thing that is a step up from the original Raimi series (sorry, but Peter and Mary Jane never felt like much more than a couple of geographic convenience to me).  The best dialogue of the movie is reserved for them and they fill the characters with a playfulness that was sorely lacking in the previous trilogy.

Also, the special effects are solid and the action set-pieces are exciting enough to justify the price of admission.  However, the tone and quality of this film is wildly uneven.  There are moments that almost reach the highs of  Raimi's Spider-Man 2 and moments that are as bad as anything in Batman and Robin, in particular the normally dependable Marton Csokas plays an evil German scientist so horribly, grotesquely over the top that he seems like he'd be more at home trading puns with B&R's Mr. Freeze than in a semi-realistic New York City.

Finally, there's a moment toward the end of the film that is clearly meant to get the audience emotional, but it feels rushed (in spite of the endless series of slo-mo shots that precede it).  The actors do their best to give it weight, but much like the rest of the movie, it feels poorly timed and just emotionally off.

As I stated before, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 isn't a bad movie.  The lead performances are terrific and the action set-pieces, which are admittedly the reason movies like this exist, are serviceable eye-candy.  However, it is frustratingly uneven.  Once again, it can't help but have a feeling of deja vu as it clamors over territory so well tread in the Raimi trilogy and at a few spots it reaches a level of camp that even the much maligned Spider-Man 3 never scraped, and yes, I do remember the jazz club scene.

Final word:  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a middle-tier superhero film.  No where near as good as the resent slate of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but still a mild diversion.  However, it is the weakest Spider-Man film to date.  If given the choice, I'd recommend you see Captain America: The Winter Soldier again.

Grade: C+