A lot to like.

Rating: 8/10 (5 May 2014)

The second film in a big tent pole series is where the film makers are supposed to seal the deal with the audience; sometimes they hit a home run and we get THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or THE DARK KNIGHT, and sometimes they foul out and we get THE MATRIX RELOADED. If the second film of the rebooted Spider Man franchise is not quite a hit out of the park, it still comes pretty close. The director, Marc Webb, manages to pull it off despite taking some risks with the material, mainly the kind of tweaking that drives comic book fans crazy and a running time of more than two hours that might try the patience of even the most ardent fan.
Despite that, THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN 2 is well worth the time because:
They get the hero right; Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker is clearly having a blast being Spider Man. There's no Dark Knight like brooding here as he swings on his webs through NYC, ready to take on any bad guy in sight; and the wise cracks and jokes at the expense of the criminals go right back to the best work of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. It's not that Spider Man doesn't have a few ghosts to haunt his days and nights above the city streets: the specters of Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy are never far away. We always are aware that it is Peter Parker under the mask and that it's the man inside and not the spandex suite that counts.
Good villains; this is make or break in a super hero film because the antagonist should always be the the equal of or superior to the hero in order for him to be truly at risk. THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN 2 has three, a dicey move, since if they get it wrong, the film could turn into BATMAN AND ROBIN. But they pull the trick off nicely, which should be no problem since Spider Man sports maybe the strongest villain bench of any comic book. Jamie Foxx plays Max Dillon, a nerdy and delusional Oscorp techie who morphs into Electro after falling into a tank of enhanced electric eels, giving him the power to command electricity; suddenly this pushed around and powerless man is omnipotent and goes completely off the deep end. Not that he wasn't way out on the plank to start with; which is firmly established in a character defining scene in Max's apartment where he gives himself a birthday cake and has a conversation with a phantom Spidey. Even more sinister is Dane Dehaan as Harry Osborn, Peter Parker's childhood friend and the new CEO of Oscorp, who, trying to cure himself of a fatal genetic disease, injects himself with spider venom (part of an experiment performed years before by Peter's long missing father) and transforms into the Green Goblin. A fair amount of time goes into setting up what motivates these villains by letting us get to know the person they were before fate or their own weakness led them to become the monsters they are now. The third villain is Paul Giamatti as the Russian thug, Alexi Sytsevich, who puts on a suite of high tech battle armor and becomes the Rhino; sadly for us Giamatti fans, he's not in the movie that much, but we're left with the promise he'll return in the future. The throwdowns between Spidey and his super powered foes are spectacular and a good use of CGI. I want to give a shout out to Colm Feore,a great character star, as a conniving Oscorp executive.
A great romance between Emma Stone's Gwen Stacey and Peter Parker, which picks up right where the first film left off. Garfield and Stone have perfect chemistry together in their tentative relationship; she knows he's Spider Man and he doesn't want her to get hurt. I give the film makers props for letting the Gwen Stacey story play out on screen exactly the way it did in the comic; if you're a fan, I'm not giving anything away.
Staying true to the Marvel universe in that we get such staples as the Ravenscroft prison for the criminally insane, Oscorp, appearances by Alistair Smythe and Felicia Hardy, and glimpses of Doc Ock and the Vulture.
And don't be annoyed that the movie has nearly four climaxes in the last half hour,at least they resolve a lot of things and set it up right for the next Spider Man movie. Bring on Mary Jane Watson and The Sinister Six.