Really disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (11 December 2014)

Was actually quite looking forward to seeing this movie as I quite enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man and thought Mark Webb might be able to get the franchise moving in the right direction again. With its predecessor butchered by Spider-Man 3, I fear the same thing has happened again with this movie.
I found myself wanting to look away at times because I found the Peter/Gwen relationship so drawn out and painful to watch. The sideshow villains are comical with none of the comedy. The main villains on the other hand, are extremely underdeveloped, which is surprising given the length of the film, and just plain irritating at times. Spider-Man's jokes are cringe-worthy and predictable, much like the rest of the film and the soundtrack went down the cliché route as well.There is also not as many action scenes as one would expect in 142 minutes.
With other franchises like X-Men (the last stand aside) and the marvel cinematic universe films consistently churning out solid movies, the bar is set so high for super-hero movies nowadays and this is nowhere near it.
At the time of writing this has an IMDb rating of 7/10 which I can scarcely believe. The only reason I have given it 4/10 and not lower is because there is actually some quite cool visuals in it and I have seen worse films than this recently. But I will certainly not be watching it again any time soon.