RBR: The Amazing Spider-Man

The fact that I waited until home video to watch this movie shows you the lack of urgency I had in seeing a reboot of this franchise. Despite having the story told to us a mere 10 years earlier, we once again sit through the origins of young Peter Parker getting bit by a spider and losing his uncle leading to his transformation into Spider-Man. This time around he's played by Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) who gives us a more rebellious than nerdy take on the character. One deviation from the previous origin story is that this one focuses on Peter's romance with Gwen Stacy. She's played by the always charming Emma Stone. Both she and Garfield give good performances although I don't necessary buy them as high schoolers. The biggest problem for me is that my familiarity with the story left me focusing on smaller details that irked me. For instance, the film takes place in New York, yet you would think that this is some post-apocalyptic version of the city considering how few people we actually see in the city outside of the primary characters. I also noticed the financial cheats the movie takes by having so much of it filmed in the shadows. You don't need a whole lot of CGI detail when everything is pitch black. Apparently all of the money was spent on the cast and it was not money well spent. You get distinguished actors like Sally Field and Martin Sheen to star as Peter's aunt and uncle and then waste them. Sheen unsurprisingly is killed off early on and Field more surprisingly disappears halfway through the film only to make a token appearance near the end. Director Marc Webb attempts to bring some gravitas to the franchise with his indie filmmaking style, but frankly it just wasn't needed. Flaws aside, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films actually felt like a comic book come to life. For all the realism that this adaptation offers, it equally saps the fun out of the story. This is a wholly unnecessary film (except for the people at Sony who needed to make it in order to prevent the rights from going over to Disney/Marvel) that doesn't need to be seem. It's harmless enough as a rental, but not a film that you need to go out of your way to see. Rating: ** 1/2