Chix Chat on Film Review: A Spiders tale respun.

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2012)

I still contend that it was too soon to reset the series, however The Amazing Spiderman was not too bad. The biggest problem for me was that the other actors who portrayed the key characters so recently were still very fresh in my mind. I did like that this Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) brought a heightened level of masculinity to the role or at least as much as could be expected for a man swinging through the city in red and blue tights with his junk on prominent display. So this time around the protagonist that Spiderman must square off against is Dr. Curt Conners (Rhys Ifans) who is pretty much an enigma the entire film, there are hints that he may have played a part in the death of Peters parents, there are hints that he is involved in some unscrupulous dealings within Oscorp, but nothing is ever clearly defined. Not even the basis of his greatest loss, which was his motivation for the research that led him to the genesis of the Lizard. Speaking of which, why did the Lizard remind me of Venon from the last Spiderman (Tobey Maguire)? I know he had scales and a tail, but he sure looked a lot like the same special effect. The story of Peter Parker and his encounter with a radio-active or genetically altered spider is consistently the basis of the transformation into Spiderman, even with his acclimation to his new abilities taking place very rapidly it still seemed tedious since it all just played out not so long ago. What I found to border on the ridiculous though was how easily Peter gained access to the spiders. A state of the art lab with state of the art technology and security would not have an area with potentially dangerous specimens so unattended, still it all just seemed too familiar. Same old same Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) solid pillars of the earth and nothing special. I will say that I enjoyed the romance that played out between Peter and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) as it seemed very organic, fresh and genuine. Obviously, there will be sequels, but now I have Mr. Garfield in my mind overlaying my visualization of Mr. Maguire as Spidey. If the sequel is fresh and has some new discovery for Peter in store, like really utilizing his 'spidey senses' then I may be a bit more enthusiastic about hitting the theater to check it out. As it stands 'been there, done that' so it gets an amber light.