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Monday, May 5, 2014
MOVIE REVIEW
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Light, Sound And Fury, Signifying Absolutely Nothing
Spider-Man
and Electro duel in Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2".
Sony
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Monday,
May 5,
2014
You know your film is in trouble when the usually
entertaining cameo of Marvel head honcho Stan Lee falls flat. The latest
cameo arrives after a furious, kinetic start to Marc Webb's "The Amazing
Spider-Man 2". The cameo and the film barely register. "Amazing" is
underwhelming, a frisky, unruly cartoon not a solid superhero drama.
Three men in New York City want your attention: Max (Jamie Foxx) is unhappy that his
tireless work at corporate behemoth Oscorp has gone unacknowledged. As
Electro, an electronic ape gone nuts, Max makes Oscorp and the world take
notice. He idolizes Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield), who has again lost the
public trust, and Spider alter-ego Peter Parker is casually indifferent to
girlfriend Gwen (Emma Stone). Peter has lost scientist dad Richard (Campbell Scott), and Oscorp's new
owner Harry (Dane DeHaan) is dying, betrayed by the company's old guard.
The three men have major emotional issues. The way they attempt to solve them is
hardly good for humanity, the environment, or themselves.
All in all
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2" looks exhausted, emotionally flat, wandering
through the motions and biding time until its next installment. Incidents
that warranted a strong response left me cold. Even the crowds witnessing
the electric light show that engulfs Times Square (an event covered by only one
NYC television network in the film) look bored and robotic. I was
nonplussed by it all, left empty by the most spectacular superhero disaster
since
"Green Lantern", or maybe "Spider-Man 3".
The wink-wink humor that worked in Mr. Raimi's first two Spider films hasn't in
Mr. Webb's second. Aunt May's (Sally Field) nursing secrets and Peter's
laundry gags fall flatter than IHOP pancakes. Peter has become a Queens
hipster, and a selfish high-school graduate. Valedictorian Gwen has her sights
set on Oxford University. Will she throw that Oxford opportunity away to
stand by her New York man? Ms. Stone has been the truest portrayal of the
rational girlfriend, to Spider-Man, a confident woman who makes her man see the
light. Yet she is barked at by Spider-Man this time, and puts up with
entirely too much. I asked myself why, and couldn't come up with an
answer. In the
previous Spider film the lovey-dovey duo were sublime. This time, Ms.
Stone and Mr. Garfield barely register in their scenes together.
Worse than all of these things is the dialogue. In a superhero film how
many original things can one say? How much pathos-laden dialogue can you
stuff into a movie? None of this multi-million dollar voltage fest emits excitement or
energy. Even worse than the dialogue is the annoying product placement,
bad enough in a decent film. Repeated shots of the VAIO logo on Sony
laptops, albeit in a film released by Sony, is downright irritating. Each
time I saw VAIO it threw me out of the film and into a commercial.
Independent of that, this new "Spider-Man" is a marketing product or brand
rather than a standalone film. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" looks like a pitched rough cut
shown to the executives who signed off on it.
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2" isn't a film I enjoyed. Mr. Webb give us no
time to connect with a wise-cracking Spider-Man because, among other things, the
hero talks even faster than he spins webs. Everything he says or does is
at 400 miles an hour. The pace and tone are sometimes oddly contradicting.
Several sequences give us near-slow-motion shots of a floating, balletic Spider
Hero and seconds after he's pinging from pillar to post like a pinball.
The film places its Spider symbol as some hallowed empire of authority and
Spidey-ness but its imagined grandeur mocks the Spider-Man name and franchise.
With this specific film the Spider-Man tradition is marred, set back several
decades.
A scene that recalls the memorable
episode in Tiananmen Square of almost exactly
25 years ago ends up in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" but all I could think of as I
watched Mr. Webb's film was Batkid, a fictional character inhabited by a
real-life courageous hero. Batkid captured the imagination and hearts of
many millions last year. All of the choreography, stagecraft and theatrics
of Batkid were so much more entertaining and exciting than the multi-million
dollar
special effects thrown at the screen in Mr. Webb's troubled, miserable mess.
Also with: Chris Cooper, Colm Feore, Felicity Jones, Paul Giamatti, B.J. Novak,
Sarah Gadon, Embeth Davidtz, Marton Csokas.
"The Amazing Spider-Man 2" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for sequences of sci-fi action/violence. The film's running time is
two hours and 20 minutes.
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