The Amazing Garfieldman

Rating: 3/10 (7 December 2013)

In a controversial move, Hollywood decided not to continue with Sam Raimi's CGI-athon Spiderman frachise in favour of a complete reboot. I'm not surprised really, the third instalment was just awful.
This time Peter Parker, played by Andrew Garfield's hair, goes through all the same motions - a good-hearted loner who faces the stereotype bully, pursues the girl, gets bitten by a spider, perfects his abilities, and along the way there just might be a few well trodden superhero lessons to learn, like the importance of being able to disguise a giant barnet under a raspberry condom mask.
In this episode, sorry movie, The Amazing Garfieldman is up against his biggest green screen foe to date - Rhys Ifans, played by a cartoon lizard. All the while pursuing his relationship with Emma Stone's Gwen Stacey.
It's well acted and there's genuine chemistry between the two leads who were in fact dating throughout the movie. There's another good turn from Denis Leary, even if his character was screaming for an injection of Tommy Gavin vipishness.
It plays slightly truer to the comic books (Spiderman invents his own web slinging device, rather than the biological alternative) and Garfield is in my opinion far more likable than that space cockroach Tobey Maguire.
But for all the little pro's, it does absolutely nothing new with the franchise and borrows heavily from the Sam Raimi series. It's far from a bad movie, it's just not a particularly interesting or inventive one and makes no apologies for following a nice safe, linear formula to it's predictable outcome.