Not-So-Amazing Spiderman

Rating: 1/10 (10 December 2014)

Oh man, this was absolutely horrendous - even worse than the first one. The characters are paper-thin, the actors are terrible (except Jamie Foxx, more on that later), the lines are cringe-worthy and the story makes no sense at all. Oh, and it's also very, very clichéd; Peter finds his dad's secret lab in an abandoned subway line, he even needs a special coin to make it come up out of the train tracks! WTF??? The story has more holes than Spiderman's web, for example: how come Spiderman seems to be impervious to Electro's shocks? What does Peter actually do except for hanging around looking cool with his big hair and hipster style? What exactly was wrong with Harry? Peter's relationship with Harry Osborn is pretty random and rushed, but Harry somehow expects Peter to do everything in his power to help him. Dane DeHaan playing Harry is just a rehash of his character in Chronicle, but this time he's a spoilt rich kid who didn't get enough hugs as a child. Man, how I miss James Franco's Harry, I actually felt for Franco's Harry: he was likable and you totally felt his pain. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have absolutely no chemistry at all, despite them actually dating in real-life at the time the movie was made, if they're on-screen relationship is so flaccid, I can't imagine what their real one must be like! Their lines are probably the corniest, cheesiest tripe I've ever heard, every time they spoke I gagged! It's "I love you" every second word, they toss those words out so casually that they don't mean anything and lack impact. With Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker, you can actually feel his struggle precisely because he doesn't say he loves Mary Jane after every second word. This brings me to Peter Parker himself, Garfield plays him with such swagger, cockiness and bravado that I really don't like him, and I find it really difficult to root for him. Tobey's Peter was a fantastic balance of vulnerability, geekiness and determination that you can't help but cheer for him and you can relate to him. The one saving grace was Jamie Foxx's Electro character - we actually understand his plight and we feel for him; who hasn't ever been trampled on by everyone and wished you had the means to fight back? When he does become Electro, he's probably the coolest villain ever i.e; when he turns into pure electricity and disappears into a power socket. He's actually a very scary villain and I wish they kept him somehow instead of cooking up some bullsh*t way to kill him. Another note on cliché: the scientist who runs the institute for the criminally insane where they keep Electro is an over-the-top neo-nazi-scientist type, he's even German!