3 stars (out of four)
In that intervening decade superhero movies have become increasingly bloated and out of hand, and I started to forget what it is I expect from
them. The Amazing Spider-Man has a
dashing and charming hero, a pretty girl and a bad guy to save her from. The
movie is also marked with a cheerful levity; it doesn’t ham it up or anything
but keeps in mind just how silly these movies are if you stop to think about
them.
And you don’t have to think too much to enjoy The Amazing
Spider-Man. The script, written by James
Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, is clunky at times and rushes
through a few key moments in the character’s early development. The previous
telling of Spider-Man’s origin will be fresh in the minds of many and there are
few surprises with regard to the basic story here. The surprises and pleasures
of this movie instead come from director Marc Webb’s lightness of touch and the
giddily fun moments he creates with his graceful cast.
Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a teenaged brainiac whose
parents mysteriously left him in the care of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and
Aunt May (Sally Field) and disappeared when he was a boy. He is a skateboarding
loner with a love of photography and who occupies one of the lower rungs of the
high school social ladder.
Mr. Garfield plays Peter as a goodhearted showboat, awkward
and a little angsty but more than ready to take on the world when the time
comes. Even after he dons the suit, Mr. Garfield does not lose the tics and
mannerisms of an overexcited adolescent. These particularly come out in Peter’s
scenes with Gwen Stacey (the always lively Emma Stone), a girl at his school
who he is crushing on big time. They share some awkward flirtation and these
scenes are the best in the film.
Marc Webb’s debut was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, the movie that revealed to
America just how adorable Zooey Deschanel is, and he has a keen sensibility for
the tone of these scenes. He gives his actors room to play, trusting that their
onscreen chemistry will create a sweetly romantic atmosphere. Ms. Stone, a
wonderfully subtle and immensely likable actress, understands her role – she is
on hand to look cute and alternately cheer, gasp and smooch – and is no less
appealing than usual, though she may be a bit underused.
Gwen works as an assistant for Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys
Ifans), a scientist who believes the regenerative powers of reptiles holds the
key to curing countless injuries, not the least of which is his own severed
right arm. And now we have our bad guy. Dr. Connors is that familiar movie
scientist; he is noble and wise and working on something momumental, the power
of which he does not yet fully grasp. Perhaps inevitably, he becomes (spoiler
alert!) a giant lizard.
Dr. Connors is of particular interest to Peter, whose father
once worked alongside Connors on some rather sensational projects. One of these
involves genetically altered spiders that shoot webs with the strength of
industrial cables. I don’t need to tell you one of these little guys bites
Peter while he’s poking around in Dr. Connors’s lab.
Before long, Peter has designed a tight-fitting red-and-blue
suit and a mechanism that shoots webs (both introduced in the requisite
training montages), and becomes a masked vigilante. This draws the ire of
Gwen’s father, Captain George Stacey (Denis Leary), who naturally sets the
entire police force on a manhunt to catch Spider-Man.
There is something almost classical about this film’s
approach, as though it were paying tribute to the 2002 film. This is, of
course, ridiculous. The original Spider-Man
is hardly old and, yes, a franchise reboot is totally unnecessary but the
gluttonous studioheads have demanded it into existence and, like it or not, here it
is. This is a gleeful, dopey, discardable bit of summer entertainment but
something about it kept me hooked.
Like the best Hollywood formulas, the superhero movie is
designed to entertain. In The Amazing Spider-Man, all the pieces are in place and it works. With no end in sight for
the genre’s box office domination, these movies will continue to be produced
for at least another decade if not longer. Some of them will be awful, others
will hopefully be great. This is a good one.
- Steve Avigliano, 7/7/12
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