The Second Wave Of Reviews For THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Hit

But as the film to kickstart the franchise afresh, The Amazing Spider-Man more than succeeds. It may not have the non-stop action and spectacle of Avengers Assemble, but it does have characters you can fall in love with, and bags of charm. You feel the series is in safe hands with Webb, Garfield and Stone. And in an extra scene in the end credits, it also delivers an enticing cliffhanger that should definitely leave you wanting more...

There isn’t a lot that hasn’t been seen before, and although the special effects are impressive, they’re no improvement on Spider-Man 2, which remains by far the best of the franchise. Director Marc Webb, hired on the strength of his indie romcom 500 Days Of Summer, does a competent job, helped by his two talented leading actors, but doesn’t bring anything fresh to the party. The writers don’t make Parker’s abandonment issues interesting or original (they come across as a trivialised versions of Batman’s), and the screenplay could have done with more humour.

Webb's film is slow on plot, skimpy on character development. It takes 45 minutes for Peter's Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) to be murdered, an hour till we see the spider suit. Then Peter goes from dorky to cocky without passing charm on the way. Brittle Gwen turns gooey the moment he turns up at school battered from fighting crime. So, chicks dig scars, right? The "RealD 3D" is fine for the flying sequences, confusing in the fights, and gives that awful cardboard-cutout look to narrative scenes. Webb saves up most of the emotional punch for a downbeat, wet-eyed ending in which Garfield and Stone are superb. Then there's a completely nonsensical scene cueing up the inevitable sequel.

Leaping back onto the screen with a new cast, crew, costume and a whole new array of daddy issues, The Amazing Spider-Man reboots the top-grossing Marvel franchise to altogether satisfying results. Directed with emotional depth and plenty of comedic touches by Marc Webb (no pun intended), this somewhat darker depiction of your friendly neighborhood superhero inserts a touching portrait of adolescent angst into an otherwise predictable dose of CGI-fueled action, with stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone breathing new life into Stan Lee’s 50-year-old creation.

So yes, this new iteration of the web slinger's origin is, I suppose, serviceable, but it also feels like a clumsy, uninspired cash grab, one which lurches through virtually all of the story beats from Sam Raimi's original, but never manages the freewheeling exuberance that propped that movie up even when it lost its footing. Sure, its got a darker color palate, a new villain, and some arbitrary changes to the back story, but nothing in the film is anywhere near diverting enough to justify the existence of the thing. Worse still, the charm, humor and melodrama that Raimi weaved into the action so deftly all feel forced and cloying this time around.

A nerdy schoolboy from Queens gets bitten by an altered arachnid -- again -- in "The Amazing Spider-Man," a mostly slick, entertaining and emotionally involving recombination of fresh and familiar elements. With the propitiously named Marc Webb at the helm and a solid screenplay, Sony's reboot of its successful franchise, arriving five years after the last Sam Raimi-directed installment, is gratifyingly more of a drama-with-action than a nonstop assault on the senses. Benefiting enormously from the perfect chemistry of leads Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, this superhero date movie should do boffo biz, though only strong word of mouth can confer must-see status.

The Amazing Spider-Man is the story of Peter Parker (Garfield), an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. Peter is also finding his way with his first high school crush, Gwen Stacy (Stone), and together, they struggle with love, commitment, and secrets. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents' disappearance - leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr Curt Connors (Ifans), his father's former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors' alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.