Good Movie, But Needed a Stronger Director

Rating: 8/10 (28 July 2017)

I was fascinated by the McGuire Spider-man and a bit lukewarm on Garfield's version. Tom Holland did a great job in his short cameo in Civil War. I was expecting a lot.
This version falls somewhere below Spider-man 2 and just slightly ahead of Spider-man. The less said about Amazing Spider-man, probably the better.
First the bad. As others have mentioned, the high tech suit really dragged the movie down, IMO. All the various webbings and the A.I. personality made it feel like Iron Man Light, rather than a Spider- man movie. Peter is a genius and made all his own weapons. Having Stark provide them robbed the character of some of that intelligence and depth. Spidey is a down-to-earth hero and looks over his neighborhood as its guardian angel. This plot got just a bit too high tech and airborne for my tastes. The climatic fight scene was poorly filmed. I could not tell what was happening as the characters all seemed to flow together in a CGI soup that made it hard to distinguish what was happening. Reminded me of the fight scenes in a Transformer movie. It was just lights, colors, and movement on screen. My biggest pet peeve with this movie (as with the other versions) is how Peter reveals his identity to seemingly everyone he meets. Peter is a loner and struggles with the infamy of being Spider-man (he is libeled in the comics by J. Jonah Jameson on a daily basis) without being able to share his identity or bask in the glory with anyone. It was central to his character and all three versions of the character have blown that up by having just about every character know his identity. Again, it makes him Iron Man Light in this respect.
The good. I REALLY liked Holland's portrayal of Peter. I think he embodies the character better than McGuire or Garfield. He's awkward, innocent, and has a wide-eyed view of the world. His "interrogation" of Donald Glover's character is probably one of the high points of all these movies. It was funny, well-acted, and provided depth to Peter/Spider-man. Thankfully, we didn't get another origin story. We join Spider-man "already in progress" so to speak. I was okay with the absence of some of the iconic characters from Peter's high school years like Gwen, Harry, and Uncle Ben. If I were Peter, I would have put down the Ned character almost immediately. He was annoying as a character and also a liability for someone with a secret identity. I loved Toomes/Vulture being a middle aged man as opposed to an old geezer like he is in the comics. Keaton was phenomenal in the role as a character who wasn't necessarily evil, but circumstances pushed him the wrong way. He was multi-layered and relatable. Tomei's Aunt May was a nice update as well. I never understood why Aunt May was so old in the comics, so making her younger actually made more sense to me. She's his aunt, not his grandmother.
The script could have been a bit tighter and the plot was underwhelming. I think less Stark would have been an improvement. Ironically, the points in the plot where Stark/Iron Man SHOULD have shown up, he doesn't. Other times he just shows up and doesn't advance the plot.
I enjoyed the film, but felt there were more misses than there should have been. While quite an improvement over Amazing Spider- man, it has a long way to go before it can surpass Spider-man 2.