Still not quite amazing, but an improvement

Rating: 4/10 (9 August 2014)

The sequel to the unnecessarily retold story made only so Sony could maintain the rights to yada yada yada, you already know. When I first saw ASM2, I pretty much hated it. I thought it was slow, overstuffed, and mediocre. That being said, there are some aspects of the movie that are good, that I enjoyed, and make it worthwhile.
One significant improvement is that Peter/Spider-Man's character is much more likable this time. That's not to say Garfield hasn't always been good in the role, it's more to do with the writing in the first movie. In this film, they really capture the humor and wisecrackiness of Spidey, (whereas in the Amazing Spider-Man it was much more sarcastic and mean-spirited).
On the other hand this film, like many comic book flicks, doesn't entirely succeed in creating fully-fleshed out, convincingly motivated villains. It does to some extent with Electro, but his transformation from pretty nice, if weird and nerdy, guy to evil mass murderer is pretty abrupt. However, that isn't all that unusual for the Spider-Man films, as the series' villains' psychology and origins have all been fairly cheesy, (aside from Norman Osbourne in the first Raimi movie).
There were some moments in the film I thoroughly enjoyed; particularly an opening chase scene with Peter foiling a heist and immediately rushing to his graduation, arriving just in time and changing into his gown while forgetting to remove the mask. There are a lot of entertaining and funny moments, particularly in the first half of the film. Somewhere in the middle though, it gets even more melodramatically forced than Spider-man 3. After that point the film really drags for about an hour until it kicks back in for the climax. The film has a serious focus issue, as there are pretty much 3, (maybe 4) story lines. Peter's arc of learning the truth about what happened to his father, Electro's arc, Harry's plot line, and the Peter/Gwen relationship. Harry's story isn't really connected to the others at all, and could've been a whole other movie.
So the Amazing Spider-man 2 is a mixed bag, with some real strengths. The action scenes are well-executed, and the humor is good and very characteristic of Spider-man. As for performances, Fox is fine, Garfield and Stone are still good and share fantastic chemistry, and Dane Dehaan is great as Harry Osbourne. On the other hand, the movie is plodding, unfocused and occasionally pretty dumb. Is it better than the unnecessary retold origin film? Yes. But director Mark Webb and co. still have a ways to go toward refining this series. 6.0/10