Pacing Issues, Unbalanced and off.

Rating: 5/10 (25 April 2014)

I went into this film with high expectations. I enjoyed the first one more than I thought I would have, as well as the trailers for this movie really had my attention going. Sadly, this movie is no where near as good as the first film and felt like it was directed by someone completely different.
The worst thing about this film is the pacing. Something about the flow of the movie was just wrong and off. Some scenes went on for way too long, I'm talking about 20 minutes of just straight up chatter of non related topics that do not contribute to the film's storyline at all. The next scene would then be a 30 second clip of something interesting, and then it would cut back to scenes that actually bored me. Even the action scenes were paced so poorly. I can't find the exact word for it, but the only word I can think of is weird when it comes to the action. Don't get me wrong, the visual effects look great and the cinematography is great also (way more colorful and bright than the first film) but nothing in the action feels natural. I was never on the edge of my seat on any of the action sequences. Even the last action that was supposed to be the final climax action set piece had me feeling empty. The structure of this movie was just messy and all over the place, and on some parts, very boring to watch.
Andrew Garfield I felt was not as strong in this film as he was in the first film. Its not so much his acting, but the script he was given. All he does is cry or look like he's about to cry, and the dialog scenes that he has with anyone (even Gwen) is super dooper cheesy and un-natural. Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborne was good, but not as spectacular as everyone says he is. He was particularly strong towards the final act of the film. Jamie Foxx was a weird one for me. I couldn't tell if his acting was poor, or if what he was told to do was poor. Before he became Electro, his scenes were off as hell. Too rushed, too many quick cuts and just unbalanced (which as I said before is pretty much the entire film). The reason of why he suddenly becomes a villain I found was just stupid. One second he's totally obsessed with spider-man and the next he wants to kill him... Ummmm...huh? One of the few things that was good about Electro (or Max Dillon) is that you sympathise for him at first and you feel sorry for him because he gets treated like horse crap. But all that connection is lost as soon as the times square showdown sequence happens. The best performance is still Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy). She's always good, but as I said before, the dialog in this movie is off, which does affect her performance on a small scale.
Another big thing that ruined the movie for me was the music. The trailers made it seem like this truly was spider-man's ultimate battle because of the music (especially the music towards the end of the final trailer). What do we get instead? Dubstep, party music (Project X stuff) and music that seems like it would belong on the Disney channel. Whenever there's an action sequence, the music completely ruins the tone of the fight making it so much more less intense than it should have been. And since Hans Zimmer was composing the score, I expected it to be intense orchestral hybrid pieces. If he were to compose a score that would sound something like inception's, then I could see that capturing the tone of the film (particularly the action sequences).
A few things I actually like about the film: The opening scene was amazing. I thought that by watching the opening scene, this movie would top all of the other Spiderman movies. Sadly I was wrong. The action as I said before is cool to watch. Everything is very colorful, and the visual effects aren't the realistic type in lets just say Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Man of Steel. Its the cartoony comic book style type of visual effects (sort of like 300's) which is great for this type of movie. I also like how they don't over do the slow motion in the movie. It was used when it was needed the most and it looked great.
All and all, this film felt like it was directed by Michael Bay. It had that weird, off, quick cut, rushed, forced and messy pace but had great visual effects just like Transformers 2 and 3. This isn't a terrible film, but its not good either. If you want to watch this movie for the action, then you're in for a treat. However, you will need to get through the clunky dialog, bad pacing, okay acting, rushed villain origin stories and a generic storyline. In total, there is probably only around 30-40 minutes of action which means you will need to get through the 90 to 100 minutes of everything else.
5/10 - Mediocre