For the most part, The Amazing Spider-man 2 is exactly what you expect: likeable teenager Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) continues to fight crime, while romancing gorgeous girlfriend Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone).
We have plenty of stunts, shots of Spidey freefalling towards the streets of New York City, and several minutes of him swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper.
In 3-D, it looks fabulous.
What's far less fabulous, is Jamie Foxx as the geeky underling who eventually becomes Electro: think Watchmen's Dr Manhattan, with clothes and bad monologues.
His dialogue would have sounded embarrassing in one of those 1960s/1970s Saturday morning cartoons.
If you can gloss over his take on Jim Carrey’s vengeful loser Edward Nygma in Batman Forever, the rest of the movie has a lot going for it.
The relationship between Parker and Stacey is magnetic; Dane DeHaan is fantastic as sick rich boy Harry Osborn, and there are good turns from the likes of a returning Sally Field, Campbell Scott and Chris Cooper.
For the most part it's entertaining stuff, but I was yearning before a sucker punch moment that director Marc Webb supplied with his first Spidey movie (the cranes scene), or Sam Raimi with the original Spider-Man 2 years ago (Aunt May’s packing up speech).
Thankfully TASM2’s third act takes some unexpected twists and turns, but those expecting to see a lot of Paul Giamatti as Rhino in the major clash promised by the extensive adverts will be sorely disappointed.
(Think The Underminer scene from The Incredibles, and you get the idea).
As good as Andrew Garfield is as the eponymous Web Slinger, it's Emma Stone who steals the show.
She has more substance than Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson in the original trilogy, and actually helps our hero instead of screaming a lot in the third act.
It's also refreshing that Spidey doesn't lose his mask every half an hour like in the Raimi movies.
So, not a perfect movie by any means, but thanks to that third act, Foxx’s earlier sins are (almost) redeemed.
No comments:
Post a Comment