An insult to Raimi's films

Rating: 5/10 (26 July 2012)

Wow. Where do I even begin? This was even worse than I expected it to be. Literally every aspect of this film was worse than the previous Spiderman movies. There was not a single redeeming quality to justify the production of this film. It was just flat out unnecessary.
To start out, just look at the acting. Whether it's a romantic scene, an emotional scene, or a fighting sequence, Andrew Garfield fails to put enough likability into his performance. Throughout the whole film, I was never really convinced that he had the potential to be a hero. Not only was his acting bad at times, but he really seemed to be missing that extra something that would make him stand out among the other characters. I especially felt that way in the scene where Peter finds out his uncle is dead. Sally Field's performance far outshined whatever emotion Andrew was trying to convey. In fact, her acting is the only thing that makes this movie even a little bit believable.
Next, there's no freaking plot! Seriously, for the first half an hour or so of the movie, there's just background information with no mention of a villain. Peter flirts with Gwen, gets in confrontations, and comes home with a bruise on his face. It's pretty ridiculous that this exact cycle happens more than once.Then, after a certain point in the film, Peter's curiosity to learn about his father's past, as well as his desire to find the guy who murdered his uncle is just abandoned. This makes the plot of the villain kind of irrelevant when it appears way later in the story, seeing as how Dr. Connors is so linked to his father's history. Nevertheless, when the villain appears in the story, so does spiderman, and he goes from being a guy in a mask searching for a murderer to a crime fighter with no real explanation.
Overall, this film just doesn't have half the effort as the other spiderman films did. There are so many questions left unanswered and so many parts of the story that don't make sense. There are no lessons to be learned from this, and its story line lacks anything that would make this movie likable for me.