Spoilers ahead. Serious spoilers.
A peculiar film which toggles repeatedly from the mediocre to the quite good, The Amazing Spider-Man may be leagues better than Spider-Man 3, but it pales in comparison to Sam Raimi's first two Spidey flicks.
We may never be able to comprehend what truly happened with Spider-Man 3, a bloated, overcrowded, canon-avoiding mess only redeemed in retrospect by the hilarity of James Franco's snide portrayal of Harry Osborne (the pie scene rules). Just thinking for a split second about Peter's Jazz dance is enough to give anyone an unwelcome convulsion of horror.
Yet there's no denying that Raimi's first two Spider-Man films were the epitome of great superhero movie-making. Tobey Maguire left a fine legacy with his sweetly innocent portrayal of Peter Parker as a perpetual screw-up goofball, yet a fully awesome force to be reckoned with if one were a super villain. Kirsten Dunst takes a weird amount of flack from franchise fans, considering what an adorably conflicted turn she gave as a Mary-Jane Watson who was equal parts Gwen Stacey. The scripts were gorgeously comic, emotional, action-packed, and harrowing. The action was brilliant.
With The Amazing Spider-Man, director Marc Webb took over the reigns on the franchise, a task that came burdened with a "reboot" concept that only a truly astonishing screenwriter and director could have made anything less than absurdly awkward. While capable enough, the new team was not able to avoid this fate, though thankfully the new movie does have its enjoyable moments.
The story by James Vanderbilt tries to jigzag around its own repetitiousness by starting earlier in Peter Parker's life than the Raimi movies did. Yet the mystery of Peter's parents, which should be intriguing, feels too vague, stereotypical, and imposed onto the film to gel. Perhaps not enough time is spent there, though to be honest I was eager for the scenes on this topic to go quickly, as it just wasn't working for me in general.
We're eventually segued from a Harry Potter-esque childhood flashback to a much more familiar situation: Peter Parker (played by a thoroughly capable Andrew Garfield), a lonely and socially confused genius teen who lives with his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). One almost fails to see the point of casting acting legends Field and Sheen to go through the tired and half-hearted-feeling motions of recapitulating the same sad tale. Yes, we see Uncle Ben walking the streets at night. And we know this isn't going to end well.Despite the problems initiated by a somewhat sluggish early pace and alternating between too-tangential and too-worn-thin plotlines, The Amazing Spider-Man begins to show some pluck when we get to the high school scenes. Putting aside the late twenty-something teenagers, the characters there are well-cast and emotionally believable.
With his much more soft-spoken, vulnerable, emo interpretation of Peter, Garfield may lack the bright-eyed charms of Maguire, but his acting is solid enough to provoke admiration for a job well done. It's odd to see Emma Stone, usually so spunky in films, placed on the sidelines in a cardboard-written role as kind, sexy, otherwise vacant Gwen Stacey. Yet the chemistry between Stone and Garfield is so potent that it often surmounts this problem in surprisingly effective love scenes. If Stacey's character can be fleshed out more in future installments (depending on how long she lives), their romance could be truly compelling.
And I was surprisingly impressed by Chris Zylka's performance as Flash Thompson, the bully-turned-sweetheart most comic fans nurture a soft spot for. While Zylka was problematically wooden in the tv show The Secret Circle last year, he brings strong believability to Flash's otherwise too-fast turnaround from villain to friend. One wishes he was in more scenes.
Scenes aplenty are awarded to Rhys Ifans as the Lizard, a bland bad guy who lacks the gut-punch of sympathetic twistedness we had in Willem Defoe's take on Norman Osborne, or Alfred Molina's wonderful Doc Ock from the earlier movies. Sadly, from the dull backstory to the vacant personality, there's nothing much doing here with Curt Connors.
While the scenes shot in LA are out of place and obvious, the NYC shot scenes are often beautiful, with a dark, murky, empty-feeling mysteriousness that provides an interesting contrast to Raimi's paint-splash bright take on Spidey's city. The action sequences are mostly well-executed, despite the CG work on Lizard being glaringly silly, as if a pre-Hulk movie level of technology were on display. If one chooses to view the effects work as evocative of the classic Japanese Godzilla movies directly referenced in the dialogue, however, it's easier to forgive that foible.
Dennis Leary, essentially tasked with playing the original Charlie from Twilight (and Twilight was clearly the model used for the entire Peter/Gwen side of the plot), gives a cutely coy, mostly fine turn as Captain Stacy. One wishes he could have held back on the wink-wink hamminess in his death scene, but ah, well.
The final few scenes are gently enticing enough to make one look forward to seeing what The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will bring. If considerable thought is put into resolving the problems of the first ASM, while amping up the stakes in the drama, character development, and the authentic feel of the setting, the sequel has a chance to excel far beyond its predecessor.
8 pink flowers out of ten.
