Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man

Score:  *** out of ***** (C+)


Long Story Short:  Amazing Spider-Man boldly swoops in five years after Raimi and Maguire last were at it with yet another superhero reboot.  Even with a decent cast (three cheers for Stone, meh for Garfield), the film ultimately boosts Marvel's and Columbia's coffers much more than its creative cache.  Newbie blockbuster director Webb experiments with other people's ideas to create one damn messy spider web, and not nearly enough of it holds together.




For the first film of July, I'm back to the superhero genre.  Under the direction of Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, the first three film adaptations of Spider-Man (released in 2002, -04, and -07) were all quite popular and, especially the second, critically praised.  I also enjoyed them quite a bit; again, especially the second film; and found that the franchise created its own nice little niche in the sprawling genre.  When I heard news of a reboot just five years after the last film came out, I was a bit skeptical.  Still, it's a tentpole summer blockbuster, and it got good (mid-70%) reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.  This reboot was directed by Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) and stars Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) and Emma Stone (The Help, etc.).


Amazing Spider-Man, as most films seem to do these days, starts with a mini-prologue:  a young Peter Parker (Garfield) is mysteriously whisked away from his home and dropped at his aunt and uncle's home, never to see his parents again.  The film's present sees Parker as a high school teenager, a pretty typical nerd with skateboard who gets picked on by jocks and steals glances at pretty girls like Gwen Stacy (Stone).  Before long, Parker finds a potential link between his missing father and a local scientist working on limb regeneration.  He sneaks into Dr. Connor's lab, but gets bitten by a spider in one of his strange experimental areas.


Parker notices some new abilities as he makes his way home, but still seeks out Dr. Connor later on.  A smart kid and the son of his old friend, Parker quickly becomes a companion of Connors, and soon stays out late working with him.  After a family tragedy, however, a grief-sticken Parker turns to his new powers to seek revenge; meanwhile, Dr. Connors turns to drastic measures in his research due to corporate pressure.  As you can imagine, the two friends turned genetic freaks soon find themselves deadly adversaries.


The cast of Amazing Spider-Man is pretty good, with a few highlights, and it's impossible not to compare them to their counterparts from the last decade.  Andrew Garfield does a decent job, and in some scenes he shows his potential.  But Tobey Maguire, in my opinion, was a much better Spider-Man.  Part of the problem is the script, but Garfield doesn't quite fit the bill, pulling the character in too many different directions (a problem for the film as a whole).  On the other hand, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy replacing Kirsten Dunst as M.J. Watson is a major upgrade.  Stone is a great actress, and the film would have done better to include her in it even more.  For lack of a better description, she simply makes her character believable.  They broke out the star power for Parker's aunt and uncle, played by Sally Field and Martin Sheen.  Both do a great job of course, but I think it might have been a better decision to use less well-known actors to portray them as the common folk they are.  Rhys Ifans as Dr. Connors is acceptable but very forgettable.  The cast standout beside Stone is, ironically, her on-screen father police chief Stacy, played by Denis Leary.  Exceptional casting, a perfect fit, and he replaces some of the excellent dry humor from last decade's newspaper boss (J.K. Simmons).


Last decade's Spider-Man adaptations mixed fast-paced web-slinging action with both heartfelt drama and lighthearted humor.  Amazing Spider-Man tries to do the same, yet also tries to differentiate itself - a difficult task.  The action, in 2D at least, has a very few highlights, but mostly gets kind of dull and repetitive fairly quickly.  It also requires the audience to suspend disbelief even more than its predecessors (Spider-Man gets thrown through walls and bounces right back up, yet gets shot once in the leg and is nearly immobilized?  Well, for a few minutes at least).  Parker's romance is more convincing in this film, although the Garfield-Stone chemistry has been overrated.  There are also a few good moments of humor, an area of strength for Garfield and Leary, but they are pretty much alone in that arena.  I don't remember a single note from the soundtrack, I'm afraid, unlike last decade's soaring themes from Danny Elfman.


***


The question that this film cannot escape is how it compares to the Raimi adaptations.  Coming just five years after the last one, Webb and Garfield had to make a really, really good film and/or a very different interpretation in order to justify its existence.  Put bluntly, they failed on both counts, moreso the first.  It's been fashionable to throw young directors into genres they're unfamiliar with, and it was a poor choice here.  Columbia tried to give Webb all the toys he could, both popular young stars (Garfield and Stone) and old standbys (Field and Sheen), as well as CGI aplenty.  One problem is that Webb dabbles with a bunch of elements that have been successful in recent action films, but most of them seem randomly placed and serve to screw up any flow the movie tries to develop.  Another problem is that in many ways the film seems to take itself seriously and tries to be very realistic, and yet there are many scenes that obliterate that attempt (mostly dealing with people ignoring the fact that Parker can suddenly do things like reverse slam-dunk a basketball from the three-point line and shatter the back board).  I've mostly been complaining here, but the film certainly isn't all bad.  If you're a big Spider-Man fan, wait to see it on Netflix.  If you want a kick ass superhero film, hold off a week for The Dark Knight Rises (I.  Can.  Not.  Freaking.  WAIT!)