Very Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (2 May 2014)

I felt the same about the first film and had higher expectations of the sequel. With the villains involved, I had higher hopes for a better, more action packed sequel. And there were things I appreciated. But for the most part, this sequel suffered from some disappointing sequelitis, the same kinds of things we've seen in numerous other comic book flick sequels. Suffice to say, while I wasn't too disappointed, with lowered expectations, it is sad to see this film fall short. But let's talk about what's good first.
The best part of the film was easily the scenes between Garfield and Stone. Both actors are excellent in their roles and have fantastic chemistry together. When they share their scenes, their relationship is believable and it's something you can completely get behind. It's the one area of the film that Webb improves over the Raimi trilogy. There's also some decent action. The action involving Electro especially is great, with a fantastic display of special effects and an exciting sense of motion.
However, unfortunately, this is where a lot of the good stuff ends. Much of the rest of the film ranges from mediocre to bad. Pretty much anything involving Harry Osborne is cringe worthy, particularly when he starts losing his sanity. While the action involving Electro is excellent, everything about the character seems to lack depth and interest. His plight isn't the least bit interesting, and his motivations feel flimsy. While he may be sympathetic in a sense, it's a cheap kind of sympathy. He feels like a villain who is there merely to be a villain for Spider-man, with little in the way of actually being a meaningful character. Paul Giamatti makes two very brief appearances, and his character feels like little more than a nod to a future film that will probably, hopefully be much better.
The story itself isn't terribly interesting either. It's the same kind of inner conflict stuff we've seen in most other comic book films, but in particular, we've already crossed this territory. While Stone makes for a much better love interest as Gwen Stacy, it's still the same tried and true story of Peter Parker having to juggle his real life and his love for Gwen and his role as Spider-man and the danger that brings. I will give the film props for a twist at the end of the film that I think is a somewhat brave and unique thing to do in a comic book film, but it's one plot point in many other retreads that we've already seen. And the stuff involving Peter's parents still isn't all that interesting. It's a nice attempt to add changes to Peter's origin, but they're just not that interesting, which is too bad considering how much of Peter's inner struggle comes from that.
This outing of Spider-man feels much like the first: uninteresting villains, needless changes to the origin story, action that, while decent, fails to be really memorable. The biggest problem here is that it feels like the middle part of a bigger story. We've seen this with films like Iron Man 2, but there is no backing here with a larger cinematic universe. Instead, we just have to hope and wait for a better Spider-man movie to come.