Lucky me. I was able to go to another Sony screening with the lovely Brooke Walker taking me to see this movie a week before it gets released. I appreciate this so very much!! Along with the screaming child someone decided to bring along..*sigh* As for the movie..well.. let’s say this.. It’s Spiderman – The Amazing Spiderman. Ok..so it’s not super amazing, but it’s entertaining enough.

I feel the chemistry between Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker/Spiderman) and Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy) is once again, quite good. Andrew Garfield is SUCH a better Spiderman than Tobey MacGuire ever could be, that much is a given. But once again, I always forget that Spiderman means….well…er… there is going to be spiders and eeeeek!!! my fear is so massive of just seeing tons of them crawl around – it equals bad dreams are ensured for me later. I remember going to see the 1st Spiderman with Ross Von Metzke & coming home & seeing a big spider on the glass of my skylight thingy in the bathroom & yes, kinda freaking out!! Though I will say, the first one had way more, so I only had to close my eyes a few times here. ha! And yes, I know it’s nothing to do with the movie and neither here nor there for a review..but it sheds a bit of light on ME, as a person. 🙂

Along to the movie, starts off well enough, and though it can tend to lean into the sappy at times between the leads, again, the chemistry between the two works well enough to not have you start yawning, though the continual ‘break-up to make up’ does get tedious at times. This time around you see our leads, Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy graduating from college and Gwen is given an offer to attend Oxford. Yep..the one in London. All the while Peter is still seeing her father, Capt. Stacy (Denis Leary in flashbacks) telling him to leave his daughter be so she can remain safe. So of course they break up.. as Spiderman has to go save the city once again from the first bad guy of this pic Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) and makes short work of him and while doing so save the life of Max Dillon (in a lackluster performance by Jamie Foxx) who then turns into the uber-Spiderman fan and thinks they are now best friends as he really has no life other than working for, you guessed it, Oscorp, where it’s such a coinkydinky that Gwen Stacy works there too and befriends him in the elevator. You see the connection coming here like a brick in the face riiigghhtt??!!!

Well another coinkydinky is right around the corner as Peter Parkers scientist dad, Richard Parker (Campbell Scott) whom we all know is dead, along with his mom, Mary Parker (Embeth Davidtz), well his ex-partner in scientist-land where they created the spider venom etc.. Norman Osborne (Chris Cooper) who is dying from some rare disease that is of course genetic and his son, Harry Osborn (played wonderfully by Dane DeHaan) and of course since their fathers worked together, they grew up together as children though once Peter’s parents were gone and he was left with his Aunt May (same smothering mom role for Sally Field) and Harry grew up rich and Peter poor..blah blah blah..we know that part of the story. What we do find out in Part 2, is how exactly Peter Parkers parents died, more about what his dad and Harry’s were up to, and how Norman Osborne was really just in it to find a cure for his disease. Harry finds this out, and wants Peter to persuade Spiderman to give him some of his blood which he thinks will cure him. Now all the while this is going on, Max Dillon (Jaime Foxx) gets into an ‘accident’ at the Oscorp facility and becomes ‘Electo’ – possibly one of the worst villians ever to grace a screen. I’m talking just plain bad. Anyone who knows me, knows I love my villians as in order to be a good villian you need to also have a redeeming quality that makes the audience want to like you just a little bit…yeah..Jamie Foxx, not one of my fav actors to begin with, brings absolutely none of this to the screen or this role. Electo though seems to be much more powerful than Spiderman and this of course brings helpful scientist-girlfriend Gwen to try and help him though in almost a stupid way as you just know things aren’t going to work out well here..and of course they don’t.

But back at Oscorp, things are firing up as the board of directors thinks Harry is to young, self-centered etc..to be running such a large, Fortune 100 billion corporation and they have him removed, which sends him into a tailspin but of course as now he is anti-Spiderman as he won’t give him his blood to help cure him, even though he doesn’t know it’s his old childhood friend Peter Parker, he is soon to find out as he finds a secret video and area within Oscorp, finds out what happened to Max Dillon/Electo, how & where they are holding him and goes to enlist Electo in his now mad pursuit of Spiderman to get the blood transfusion. To make a long story short here, and yes, it’s a long story, they don’t succeed, but Harry does end up injecting himself with what he believes is the cure and then BAMMO..he is now Harry Osborn aka The Green Goblin..so just as Spidey is done dealing with Electo and thinks things are snug in a rug..there comes Green Goblin to ruin all that..

Lastly, to sum it up, Electo doesn’t succeed.. Harry/Green Goblin ends up back in the mental institution with a plan to still come after Spiderman, who after something big has happened (as always, no spoilers from me), doesn’t really want to be Spiderman anymore, but Harry is plotting to help prisoners escape and back in the picture comes Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) and of course Spiderman makes a stunning return to save the day. The End.. or is it as they’ve clearly set up the next one and I can’t wait to see Dane DeHaan back as more of the Green Goblin..a very entertaining villian and one I liked a lot.

All in all the movie is long..this review is way long for me..so you know the movie really is too..I don’t usually like to have, let alone read reviews this long..ha! So..with that..

Grade: C
#peggyathemovies