A good reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, but keep your expectations in check

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2012)

So it's an annoying pattern for me with some of these summer films. They mostly go like this: a so so story, average acting at best and great special effects/action. That's pretty much what we have here. I wasn't expecting much going in given as I felt like they just finished making the original trilogy and this film was somewhat unnecessary. But after the debacle that was Spider-Man 3, it was probably inevitable. Truthfully though, my low expectations were met.
First of all there are some tweaks to the story, but that's to be expected of a reboot. Some changes I liked, some I didn't. For the most part, they stayed true to the story line you'd expect. However, it was a bit formulaic and the themes were still fairly simple and somewhat childish, but it's a comic book film, so I can't get too upset about that, right? Well, not exactly. I know, it's just comic book movie, but The Dark Knight has spoiled me, I'm sorry. I'm still hoping for a bit of a darker tweak to the franchise at some point.
The film definitely got better as it went along, much better. The first third of the film did feel really rushed to me a it seemed they wanted to very quickly setup the known elements of the origin story to get to the action and later story arcs. Kind of surprising, I mean, I think we know the Spider-Man story at this point don't we? But I digress. It was was over the top in a number of ways. The soundtrack was over done and pushed the sentimentality a little too much for my liking. And it was also way too cheesy, I had a few too many "oh come on" moments. Particularly one that was just so over the top I gasped, but it's one the young ladies in the theatre loved; it was both romantic and incredibly cheesy.
Andrew Garfield was definitely a solid choice, he clearly felt much more like Peter Parker than Tobey McQuire did. He was very shy, awkward and a little troubled, staying true to the Peter Parker we've seen while effectively improving on those performances. I'm curious now to re-watch the original trilogy to see how I feel about him in that role after seeing this. He and Emma Stone are cute together and much more likable than Tobey and Kirsten Dunst were (especially Dunst, who I found annoying). The film had a childish playfulness to it that I enjoyed and found authentic and this was directly because of them. Martin Sheen and Sally Field were also good in the limited roles they had.
The high point of the film were the special effects, hands down. I loved the Lizard, easily the best visualization of him I've seen to date. He was very sinister and a little dark. Also loved the voice over work done for him as well. Didn't really care much for the Rhys Ifans pre-lizard character however, felt he was not as compelling as Alfred Molina's Doc Oc. Spider-Man looked fantastic, the effects for him have clearly gotten better, much better. Given the new bar set here for special effects, I can't wait to see what they do with Venom later in the series.
Now having said all that, this was fairly entertaining. The fight scenes were very impressive and well choreographed. It definitely had a genuine comic book and cartoon feel to it and I thought was cool in a nostalgic kind of way. It reminded me very much of the Fox afternoon Spider-Man cartoon I used to watch back in my early high school days. So definitely credit there, as I don't think any of the original films did this for me to this extent.
I was however baffled by the rapturous applause it got at the end in my theatre. I can't remember the last film that got that much applause, to be really honest (not even The Avengers got that). Was it good, yes. Was it deserving of that kind of applause, no. But then again, I'm a bit snobby I guess, so to each his own. In a nutshell; it was enjoyable and I look forward to the rest of this series with this improved cast. But the standard for Spider-Man movies remains 2004's Spider-Man 2.
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