A vast improvement on the original, but can't save the franchise

Rating: 6/10 (14 March 2015)

You can relax, there's nothing in this one as bad as the "hero" allowing a store to be robbed because he can't afford a milkshake, but there's nothing in this to completely redeem the mess of a first film either.
Andrew Garfield returns as Peter Parker and this time he is acting a little more responsibly as Gwen's late father (Denis Leary) comes to him in a vision to remind him of his promise to "keep Gwen out of this" and he breaks up with her. Better late than never. Next we see Peter's childhood friend Harry Osborne come back to town to see his terminally ill father Norman (a completely wasted Chris Cooper) and.... oh holy jeepers, I just can't do it! I'm sorry, why am I watching this same story again? Can you guess which villain Hary Osborne turns out to be? Argghhhhh.
OK next up on the villain list we have Jamie Foxx, who must have been watching Batman Forever (or maybe one of the four writers who spat this out by committee had) as he plays Edward Nigma, I mean max Dillon. A nerd, but he gets super powers and instead of turning into the Riddler, he turns into Electro, a wasted villain.
Let's see what else happens...well, let's face it, you don't care and neither does anyone else on the committee that vomited this out. And just to try and convince you something meaningful has happened in this and that it's actually following the comic, they kill off Gwen at the end. But far from being a moment of genuine emotion, it's just another tacked on, ineffectual contrivance to try and convince you that you are actually invested in this. Far from honouring the comics, this is a moment that simply follows it for convenience. And it ends back at the beginning with Spiderman trying to stop a rampaging Paul Giamatti.
The main things to appreciate here are on the technical side. Webb has done a good job of capturing spider sense, and effectively uses more established filming techniques to create a sense of frenetic action. The set pieces are all breathtaking and the big battles deliver on the effects side of things. It's the action sequences that really elevate this above the by the numbers production that it almost is. So I tip my hat to Mark Webb, but unfortunately, to paraphrase the Dark Knight, he's the director this film needs, but not the one it deserves.
The other positive are our two leads, Stone is a superior love interest to MJ in the originals and a superior character as well who serves a function beyond being a damsel in distress. Andrew Garfield is great as Parker and arguably delivers the best characterization of Parker seen on the big screen. However, like Timothy Dalton as James Bond, he's the right actor at the wrong time, and not even his performance can elevate the character or the film above the mediocrity he is given to work with.
To finish off, the story in this film is a mess. A well made, well acted mess, but ultimately a mess all the same. It's not a bad thing that this one underperformed and Sony have again decided to reboot the franchise. Hopefully a bit more thought can revitalize this series that money grabbing laziness has greatly diminished over the past two films and the director's ego diminished in the third.