More of the same - an uneven, overblown CGI-fest

Rating: 6/10 (10 June 2020)

Spiderman (Andrew Garfield) faces off against Electro (Jamie Foxx), an electrically-charged super villain. Typical MCU PG shtick: a superhero cracking wise while saving the city from violent but mostly bloodless carnage. Garfield is OK as the web-slinger but much of his dialogue was strained and contrived, especially the incessant quips. Emma Stone makes for a striking Gwen Stacy but the character's 'deux ex machina' arrival in the power plant was a silly plot twist and Jamie Foxx is fine as the syntho-voiced and largely CGI Electro but painfully awful as pre-villain nebbish Max Dillion. The film seems rushed and is stuffed with too many characters. In addition to Electro, there is a perfunctory fight with the Green Goblin (including a wedged in back story) and a teaser squabble with a ridiculously mechanised 'Rhino' (Paul Giamatti, although it's hard to imagine any attempt to depict the Rhino character not looking ridiculous). The plot is a by-the-numbers superhero sketch with yet another energy-sucking threat that maybe can be stopped by feeding it too much energy (a threat/solution that's been around since at least 1953's 'The Magnetic Monster'). Typical for MCU opuses, the film is very uneven, swinging between sentimental melodrama and light-weight action-adventure, and even the tragic event in the final reel is granted no more the a few minutes of drama before Spidey is back to his signature gibes and one-liners. Most of the climactic battle is so drenched with flashing lights and shifting colour that it is hard to tell what is supposed to be happening and action sequences are filled with too many gimmicky (and clichÃ©d) slow-mo and bullet-time shots. The film's unimpressive returns killed this iteration of the Wall-crawler (the second of three in a decade).