Redundant from the very beginning

Rating: 3/10 (16 April 2014)

I'm a bit ambivalent towards superhero films. Sure, they offer crowd-pleasing entertainment, but most of them turn into CGI monstrosities devoid of originality and wit long before the ending, and unfortunately the same thing happens with THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. And that's without mentioning that this is an entirely redundant remake of the Sam Raimi original, which only came out about a decade ago.
See, I liked the Raimi trilogy of Spiderman flicks. Raimi brought his own directorial quirks to the films, making them slightly campy and a whole lot of fun. Here, it's all about earnestness, which is dull, and it quickly becomes obvious that director Marc Webb (a made-up name, surely?) has little experience of handling this kind of expensive material.
Andrew Garfield has a knack for picking slightly irritating characters and that knack is evidence in his Peter Parker, who lacks the decency that Tobey Maguire brought to the role. The whole high school schtick is faintly embarrassing to sit through, but it gets worse about halfway through when the plot dissolves to be replaced by one CGI-laden action sequence after another. They're all silly and predictable, lacking the kind of choreography that a director like, say, Christopher Nolan, would bring to them.
There's little else to enjoy along the way, either. I didn't like Kristen Dunst in the Raimi trilogy, but Emma Stone is hardly better, a bland blonde bimbo and nothing more. Rhys Ifans is impossible to take seriously as the bad guy, while old-timers Martin Sheen and Sally Field have very little to work with. There's no great insight into the characters or anything like that; in fact, this is just a kid's film that anyone older than a teenager will struggle to enjoy.