The Amazing Spider-Man 2 [2014] ★★½

Spidey fans went crazy when Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced that they were rebooting the series, just five years after Sam Raimi’s “Spider Man 3” hit theaters back in 2007. As a result, the first “Amazing Spider-Man” received mixed reviews by critics and fans upon release; some people praised Andrew Garfield’s performance while others said the movie itself was pointless. I fall somewhere in between those two extremes. While I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the first film, I must admit: I really enjoyed it. Was it possible to forget the trilogy director Sam Raimi built with Tobey Maguire as Spidey and Kirsten Dunst as his teen love? No way. But director Mark Webb and Andrew Garfield brought something fresh to the table, and they won me over almost instantly. What they couldn’t do is win me over all over again and that’s a damn shame. There’s nothing really wrong with “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”, but it’s déjà vu all over again, at least for a long time fan of the series. At 142 minutes, the movie is too packed with villains, too limp in its love story, and too reliant on visual effects. Peter Parker finds himself battling Electro (played by Jamie Foxx), a former engineering technician at Oscorp, the evil corporation now owned by his old friend Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan). Meanwhile, he also has to deal with his on again-off again girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and find out more about his father’s past. As a result, the movie never stops to take a deep breath and neither do we! That being said, this sequel has its virtues, chief among them its two stars: Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, who can’t help being drawn into Peter’s web. One would think that this combination of high-powered talent would have yielded a film with far more emotional depth and resonance. No luck. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is far from being a bad movie. But it’s an example of Hollywood product made to satisfy a commercial demand and a release-date deadline, as opposed to a movie born out of passion to tell a good story. And that’s kind of disappointing.

Rating: 2.5/4