Spider-Man. The twilight edition.

Rating: 5/10 (2 July 2012)

I have seen this movie and came away disappointed yet happy that Raimi's work is there for re-watch – which I did after TASM. The difference is night and day. Raimi's work stands the test of time.
I didn't support a remake in the first place simply because it's too soon and the whole exercise smelled of money grabbing. But after the second trailer I changed my opinion and thought, TASM could be a good movie – I was wrong.
Initially I thought Garfield would make a good Spidey, and felt that Tobey was too downbeat as Parker. I was wrong. They both played their characters well – the best version would be a combo of both. Tobey played nerd well. Garfield plays Spidey as a smart alec. Though Tobey showed some glimpses of that as well. Go re-watch the first two of Raimi's films and you'll know what I mean.
Now for the review – C
The film struggles to stay average.
The plot is quite weak and the pacing is slow. You'd expect the pacing to pick up after the initial half of the film after Parker gets bitten etc. but it never really hits a high comparable to Raimi's works – all three of em.
Just to get it out of the way, comparisons between Raimi's trilogy and this are inevitable and you will do so yourself once you start watching.
The action is not special and the transformation of Parker to Spidey is hum-drum. The musical score was a detriment to this film. James Horner did a real disservice to this film with his heroic score but failed to account for the youthfulness of his characters.
The saving grace to an extent is the relationship between Parker and Gwen, ahem I mean between Garfield and Emma. You can see they really like each othera lot!
The whole subplot about his parents, scientific work is so thin it's almost laughable if it wasn't for Rhys Ifans Lizard who lends an element of credible menace. But it's resolved too readily at the climax.
The mid credit scene was poorly executed. It gives no real anticipation of what's coming next. Webb is clueless in how to do so. Overall the film barely makes it in my opinion. It pales to the more recent Marvel films (though this is by Sony) and is no where near The Avengers or Dark Knight as others would have you believe.
Raimi's work was truer to the comics genesis plot. Webb's work majored on the minor – Gwen instead of Mary Jane, web shooters instead of organic web. It lost the soul Spidey's beginnings and weaved in the missing parents 'plot' simply to differentiate and little else. Even this is unresolved and is not very interesting to begin with.
Sorry Spidey fans. This is not a good movie to re-watch again and again.