'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' is repetitive, but Andrew Garfield remains a believable hero
Overlong and repetitive as it is, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” directed by Marc Webb in his second outing with the franchise, at least delivers the goods. Andrew Garfield, returning as Peter Parker, remains ingratiatingly jittery. You can believe that this kid, never at rest, could instantly transform himself into Spider-Man. He matches up well with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, who also jangles her way through the proceedings. Their body language is contrapuntal.
The sweetness of their young-love pairing is overmatched by the film’s bevy of villains, the best of which is Jamie Foxx’s Electro, an unbalanced Oscorp employee named Max Dillon who has the misfortune to be bitten by electric eels. There’s also Dane DeHaan’s Green Goblin and, in a hilariously maniacal turn, Paul Giamatti as a tattoed Russian criminal who returns in the film’s concluding section as Rhino. (This performance will not remind anybody of Giamatti’s performance as John Adams.)
A word of caution: Most of these superhero comic book movies have a teaser for the sequel built into the end credits. Not so here (or at least not in the press preview I saw). If you sit through an interminable crawl of names only to come up empty-handed, don’t say you weren’t warned. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action/violence)
