

But it's also over-stuffed with plot and consequently struggles to invest the audience in any of it, since there's so much to get through and so many future films and spinoffs to set up. And there's still much to recommend about what he, director Marc Webb, and his co-stars are doing here: the film is much funnier and filled with the free-wheeling energy that defines Spider-Man as a comic book character. I speak as someone who both enjoyed and saw the merit of this rebooted film series, which threw the lanky, energetic Andrew Garfield into the role of Peter Parker.

It took Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series three films to make the mistakes The Amazing Spider-Man is making in two. This article is from the archive of our partner.
