The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made almost $92 million in its own opening weekend, so pretty much you already know whether you want to see this movie or not, and already have. I’m writing my review anyway for posterity.

First, I was a surprisingly huge fan of the first Amazing Spider-Man. It was basically a beat-for-beat remark of the other most recent Spider-Man franchise, only instead of annoying mopey Tobey Maguire you had charmingly frenetic Andrew Garfield. I know that that doesn’t work for some people (Josh Larsen of Filmspotting included) and that everyone agreed the reboot was unnecessary, but the twitchiness completely reflected my personal experience of high school. I was completely on board with Andrew Garfield as my official Spider-Man.

Of course, this is why we can’t have nice things. We like a movie and they make another one and then we have to say “…oh. Huh. Thanks? I guess?” The plot is that Spider-Man is being all angst-stricken about his relationship with Gwen Stacy, there’s a guy who turns into a super villain (Jamie Foxx) (the actor, not a super villain himself), and also something about how Spider-Man’s parents died, though it’s kind of useless. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this movie, but not much that’s particularly right, either. Let’s do a nice tally, shall we?

Bad Things about The Amazing Spider-Man 2:

• It’s two hours and twenty minutes long.
• The villain is… eh.
• They don’t explain why electricity can make you levitate (pet peeve. They could have said any number of pseudo-sciencey things to explain it away, but they didn’t even do that).
• Every scene with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) drug everything down in an annoying way. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are good together, but the writing was so annoying. So angsty. So wishy-washy.
• It reinforces the YA fiction notion that stalking is romantic and not creepy.
• Dane DeHaan’s hair.
• The fact that there are two villains, a love story(ish), a stupid thing about his parents, and still nothing interesting happens.
• Did I mention it’s two hours and twenty minutes long? I watched Ben-Hur this year, and Doctor Zhivago, and How the West Was Won, and I’m still saying that this movie is too long.

Good Things about The Amazing Spider-Man 2:

• Dane DeHaan
• [spoiler redacted] meaning that it won’t be a problem in a future third movie.
• Uh… a couple good lines?

The way the movie ends, with The Green Goblin having come into Evil Villain-ness and the spoiler I referenced, I think that the third movie will be great. It will have my favorite part of the second one (Dane DeHaan) and have nixed my least favorite part. But no particular part of the second one makes it worth watching except as a way of marking time between the first and the third.

Not Recommended