By Kyle Osborne
The Spider-Man reboot of 2012 with Andrew Garfield in the title role was great—the youthful exuberance and joke cracking was, to me, more appealing than Tobey Maguire’s sleepy-eyed moodiness. Hey, if we want a brooding super hero, we’ll go to a Dark Knight movie. Now comes “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” with the same great cast, but the energy doesn’t last.
After a spectacular prologue involving Peter Parker’s doomed parents, we open up with spectacular flying sequences above the streets of Manhattan, and a high adrenaline car chase up Sixth Avenue that sets what you hope is the pacing and tone for what will turn out to be a two hour and twenty minute movie that has way too many characters, plot threads and some unwelcome darkness that somewhat sabotages the good will that’s been well earned up til then.
Andrew Garfield’s charisma is shinier than his Lycra suit, and his girlfriend Gwen, played once again by the always sunny Emma Stone, is back, too. Only there’s trouble in paradise—they’re not getting along well and, anyway, she may be headed for England to attend Oxford, if she gets accepted.
So there’s one plot strand, now enter Jamie Foxx as a nerdy electrical technician who happens to be a Spidey fan at the possibly evil Oscorp. We feel kinda sorry for Max, and when he falls into a giant aquarium of electric eels, on his birthday no less, he’s transformed into Electro, a villain with whom you kinda empathize, even as he makes a big mess in the middle of Times Square, in the one of the movies several grand set pieces. And that’s two major plot strands.
But there’s more—Peter’s old friend Harry Osborn, played by the deliciously creepy Dane DeHaan is dying of a kind of poisoning, and he thinks the blood of Spider-Man might just be the perfect antidote. And so, there’s another storyline.
Not to mention, Peter stumbles upon some cool clues as to his parents’ past, which leads him to a hidden subway stop that was built for…well, now we’re getting close to some spoilers, which I won’t do.
I’m torn because there are so many, well, “amazing” elements to the movie and some really good summer blockbuster sequences, but the movie has too plates spinning—it’s constantly cutting from one to another, never fully getting into a groove on any single one of the narratives.
Will it be a smash at the box office? Of course. Will you love parts of it and get tired of the too long running time? Almost certainly. Does this mean it’s gonna get a mixed review? Absolutely.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” gets 2 ½ out of 4 Stars.