Impressive spectacle but overstuffed and empty

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2014)

Both Amazing Spider-Man films get a lot of hate, and while for me they weren't as bad as all that(if anything personally they were moderately enjoyable films) I do agree with a lot of the criticisms for both. Some say the sequel is better, personally the first while being very over-familiar and unevenly paced and with a severely underdeveloped villain the first was a little better but still fell far short. There are good things about the sequel. Once again it is very stylishly made and the special effects are better this time round, while the action sequences provide some thrills. The chemistry between Peter and Gwen is still sweet, Peter at the grave is actually quite moving and the closest the film ever gets to having any emotional impact and some of the acting is good. Andrew Garfield's performance is much better here, he doesn't ever quite capture Spider-Man's vulnerability but he is much less smug and tones down the quirkiness. Emma Stone is a charming and very likable Gwen, Sally Field gives seasoned support as Aunt May although she doesn't have much to do and Dane DeHaan does a great job showing Harry Osborn's slow descent into fear and loneliness. However, Jamie Foxx despite looking really cool doesn't do anything with Electro and looks lost and Paul Giamatti is completely wasted and gives a rare bad performance. The script and the way the characters are written don't help, the script is very thinly sketched and tries to balance comedy and pathos and does so awkwardly, to the extent the comedy feels overly-broad and out of place and the pathos apart from one part is non-existent literally. And the film does suffer from too many characters and most of them with little development, with the two leads the most interesting characters. There are two too many villains(the same problem that Spider-Man 3 had) and none of them developed very well, Osborn/Green Goblin just about musters due to DeHaan but his development still feels rushed and some of his actions out of the blue, the villain also deserved a much better resurrection which was cheaply done. Like Lizard in the first film Electro is very one-dimensional with no motivation, or shall we say no obvious one, and Rhino feels like a just-there-for-the-sake-of-it character. The story doesn't suffer from being over-familiar like the first Amazing Spider-Man but it does suffer from a very sprawling structure and a lot of it feels over-stuffed and plodding. The music has its moments and does fit better than James Horner's for the first Amazing Spider Man but it does lack pace and one of those pleasant-to-listen-to-but-easily-forgettable scores, three composers are credited and the score sometimes sounds like that is the case. All in all, moderately enjoyable and visually impressive, and Garfield is much more at ease here, but it does suffer from trying to do too much and feels empty and emotionally-lacking. 5/10 Bethany