A heavily-glittered Greeting Card with no Meaningful Text.

Rating: 4/10 (24 March 2019)

I'll be candid, I didn't watch this movie at one go - which may be an argument against the movie itself. Having just watched the first film, I wanted to see how the 2nd one continued the story. Watching it in 2019, my expectations from this sequel were at bay as I had already known of the mixed response to this film.
Things started off okay as the opening scene with spider-man came along. The visuals were much brighter than the first one, the suit much more faithful to the comics, and the spider-man seemed more quippy.
Of course, Paul Giamatti's character (who wasn't Rhino yet) already gave me a sense that the villains in this film were not to be taken seriously - given their somewhat-nonsensical actions, the motivations thereof, and even just the dialogue delivery being synonymous to the 'pure evilness' of villains - who did things just to 'be evil'.
The opening scene was further intercut with a scene where Peter's high-school batch were graduating, and Gwen giving a speech as the valedictorian. The way these two scenes were intercut felt incoherent and without motivation other than to show these two events occurring simultaneously.
This incoherency also gave me a sense that the film and its plot were to follow the same suit.
There's no denying that Electro's character had really no development or motivation to do what he does in the film. The character went from being a caricature of a nerdy Spider-man admirer straight to becoming a caricature of being a Spider-man hater without any formidable reason other than "Spider-man did not remember my name."
Speaking of which, all the villains in this movie are just caricatures of the evil, up-to-no-good villains prevalent in action movies before the 80s, comic books and even story books written for children.
Everything about them was unfortunately repulsive - the performances, their non-existent arcs or character development, and their insignificant relevance to the protagonist, story and plot.
I stopped watching the movie right before the Electro boss fight, as I already knew by that point what would happen in the story later on. There was no reason for me to continue watching the film, as I wasn't keen on watching Electro (given his character's poor development and execution), neither did the film make me care enough to see Spider-man defeat him.
The role of Gwen felt rather ambiguous and vague, as though her only purpose was to be a token romance character for Peter to care for. Her motivations for doing certain things had no weight for justifying her existence in this film other than to simply set up her (SPOILER) death at the end.
Coming to Hans Zimmer's score, I actually liked the dubstep score of the Electro fight - despite the fact that Electro 'making' that music made absolutely no sense. But the score did add some needed tension onto the CGI-heavy fight between Spidey and Electro.
On the other hand, Zimmer composed a special theme for Spiderman which rightly gives off a 'hopeful' vibe, but the theme itself is overused in the movie to the point that its' impact diminishes with every use of it.
On a positive note, I have a somewhat special connection to the final few scenes (except the futile Sinister Six setup). Being in a dark moment of my own life, I could somewhat relate to Peter going through his period of grief and finally getting over it. This credits solely to Andrew Garfield's performance, since the screenplay added nothing to make me feel for him.
In a scene where Peter watches a video of Gwen's valedictorian speech, a particular line struck a chord with me:
"It's easy to feel hopeful on a beautiful day like today, but there will be dark days ahead of us too. There will be days where you feel all alone, and that's when hope is needed most."
Although, the way the speech ended up in Peter's laptop made no sense, since there weren't any cameras shown to record her speech in the graduation the way it was shown in the laptop.
The ending scene with Rhino had only one good thing - Peter finally getting up from his state of grief to fight back.
Other than that, the scene was terrible overall - Paul Giamatti's 'crazed' performance, the way it was shot with shaky cam and abrupt zoom-in shots, the CGI of Giamatti inside the Rhino suit, and the convenience of no casualties suffered (especially among the cops) despite the enormity of Rhino's attack.
Even Peter's motivations of becoming Spider-man again was very sudden and poorly shown, intercutting between him looking at his suit, smiling and the Rhino making an appearance. Peter conveniently became Spider-man at the same time as the Rhino wreaks havoc, having no correlation between the two.
In my opinion, what would have made the scene better was to show the escalating tension of the Rhino wreaking havoc, and this resulting Peter in having to return as Spider-man to save the city that relies on him.
Apart from that, the film consists of several sub-plots and setups that are incredibly futile in the primary plot-line - the pointless and shoddy set-up of Sinister Six, the disappearance of Peter's parents, the inclusion of Norman & Harry Osborn and the possible separation of Peter and Gwen.
Overall, I can say that the film is somewhat like an insignificant greeting card - all shine and glitter without any valuable or meaningful text to it. The characters and overall story lacked depth and relevance that had potential to the film more compelling, resulting in the audiences not being able to care about anyone or anything in the story...
..which explains why Sony decided to move on and finally collaborate with Marvel on the character, a move we're all grateful for.