Movie Reviews

Let me get straight to the point here… as much as I liked the first Amazing Spider-Man, this one fell short. Sure, it’s a summer blockbuster so you expect a lot of stuff to blow up, you know things have to be flashy, glossy and shiny and seeing as it’s a sequel, things have to be even bigger. But there is such a thing as ‘too much’.

The thing I liked about the first movie is that – despite the fact that it was a superhero-laden flick  made for popcorn consumers - you could tell that director Marc Webb was still the guy who also treated us to “(500) Days Of Summer”. And while there’s a little of that left in this sequel, it doesn’t weigh up to the rest here… and there’s a lot of it.

While still trying to figure out what exactly happened to his parents, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) has come to terms with the fact that he’s a superhero now. Meanwhile there’s the girl he loves (the delightful Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy) but can’t have because he wants to respect the wish of her late father (Denis Leary) to stay away from her and keep her out of trouble.

As if that isn’t already plenty to handle when you’re a teenager, Parker also reconnects with his childhood buddy Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), who is slowly turning into an equally scheming destructive force like his father, the head of the Oscorp corporation. It’s also at Oscorp that the Spider-man obsessed engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) has an accident and turns into the evil Electro after falling in a reservoir with electric eels. And just when you think it’s over, there’s the third baddie that pops up in the form of Paul Giamatti as Rhino.

It all feels a little bloated to be honest… to quote the Godfather: just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! Speaking of the Godfather (another movie with a lot of bad guys), the focus there was on the characters, rather than the big special effects. It might just be the way to go for the next installment. I know I would like it a lot more!