Meh

Rating: 5/10 (9 April 2014)

When I heard the news that the fourth Raimi movie would be canceled in favor of a reboot, I admit that I was disappointed - my spider-sense was tingling so to say. After a while, I've come to accept it and I started to believe that a fresh start could be awesome - after all there are many different Spidey story-lines they could pick from, so I was curious which they would choose and how it would differentiate from Raimis vision.
Marc Webb seemed to me as somewhat of an interesting if a bit of an odd choice. I've seen his "(500) Days of Summer" movie and though of it as an alright, lighthearted, boy-meets-girl flick, but nothing special. Once I saw "The Amazing Spider-Man" however, I kinda wished we could go back to the fourth Raimi movie.
The main problem being that the movies story itself is too similar to the first Spider-Man, that it seems almost entirely unnecessary. The changes don't have much of an impact to differentiate it enough and it seems like their entire point is for the sake of the upcoming sequels rather than this one, which makes the movie feel bland, as if it is holding back with ideas in order to have more material for it's sequels and spin-offs (and I'm pretty sure there's a lot more planned than they've already announced).
Another thing that was bothering me was the directing. The more down-to-earth and personal moments are clashing with the action and comical elements. They felt as if they were from a completely different movie, something like "(500) days of summer" or any movie that is more grounded in reality. Normally I don't have an issue with comicbook-heroes dealing with real-life stuff, to the contrary, but here they felt quite misplaced, off, and, for a lack of a better word, quite awkward. The movie doesn't have a natural flow. Everything feels so constructed, almost cold or soulless. In Raimis movies, you could literally feel his passion for the material and the fun he had making these movies. They had a spot-on mix of self-awareness, goofiness and seriousness and that gave them such a recognizable charm. In TASM however, this is absent. The human side of the main-character didn't suck me in. The movie has more of a serious and realistic tone to it, which could've been fun too, but it's just not pulled off that well.
As far as the action goes... it's pretty much what you'd expect it to be. Nothing special or memorable, but alright. From the CGI I kinda expected more, especially to be less obvious in some scenes where Spidey is the only thing animated. The cast and acting was good and consistent, even though I still think Emma Stone is a bit of a miscast. Her look just doesn't quite fit the character in my mind - but it's just a minor nitpick from my side.
As a long time Spider-Man fan I expected a lot more from this one. For a fresh start a good chunk of the story felt too familiar, almost like a deja vu, which should've been avoided. It's not a bad movie by any means, but it strikes me just as plain mediocre, even more so compared to the Raimi trilogy. It just doesn't stick.