Nowhere near good enough

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2014)

Review – A supremely average follow up to The Amazing Spider-Man. Borderline dreadful, compared to it's predecessor.
Performances range from good to awful. Andrew Garfield reprises his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and puts in a good performance as does Emma Stone, whose chemistry with Garfield works well on screen. Dane DeHaan (who is a brilliant new talent) comes across as a tired looking Leonardo DiCaprio impersonator. He has a few good moments with Garfield and a great scene with Chris Cooper (playing a dying Norman Osborne) but his scenes as the Green Goblin are just laughable. Imagine Gollum from the Lord of The Rings, with barely any hair, dehydrated and on some serious crack. That's the Green Goblin you see in this film. A grotesque looking man wearing Oscorp battle armour, instead of the mask wearing insane antagonist we're familiar with. Just a totally rushed villain whose inclusion was only there to please the fan boys.
Then we have Jamie Foxx as Max Dillion/Electro. A super villain with anger issues and low self-esteem. Seriously miscast, and found wanting in every scene he was in. However, making Electro pure electrolysis did work. It's just unfortunate that the character is so annoyingly bad, he becomes immediately forgettable as soon as you leave the cinema. Foxx's performance as the Max Dillon character is reminiscent Jim Carrey's as Edward Nygma in Batman Forever. It was incredibly cheesy and dated.
The narrative is jumbled, the script dire beyond belief and the inclusion of Rhino as an additional villain is a huge mistake. Paul Giamatti (sporting a bald head and Adidas tracksuit) as the Rhino, only has 10 mins worth of screen time. When he finally does don the Rhino suit (near the end of the film) the animatronics for the suit are so bad, the encounter between him and Spider-Man look more like a video game cut scene, rather than a special effects set piece from a 250 million dollar superhero film. This is primarily the reason why this movie fails in my opinion. Terrible inconsistency with regard to the effects that look incredibly choppy in some scenes, good in other parts of the film. The budget for this sequel is a significant increase after the success of the first installment, but on a technical level it's awful. Some scenes almost mirror X-Box One's advert for the Amazing Spider-Man 2 game. Marketing overdrive? Yes I think so.
Lastly the insipid love story we have to endure between Gwen and Peter is another problem. The will she won't she, will he won't he back and forth nonsense becomes so boring and drawn out, I became less invested as the film went on. The overall tone switches from dark superhero to comical kids film like a metronome, and the main story it all hinges on is just a mess.
Overall, Amazing Spider-Man 2 entertains with it's action. Just a shame it's story, shoddy script, boring romance between the two leads and Webb's lacklustre direction make this a bore fest with few thrills.
Disappointed!
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