The Amazing Spider-Man Review
Review by Mercury News
Without a doubt, “The Amazing Spider-Man” wipes away the horrible aftertaste left by “Spider-Man 3.” And while that’s welcome news, there’s a bigger question at hand: Is this reboot featuring the beloved Peter Parker — a guy we saw on the big screen just five years ago — even necessary? Yes, it is.
In fact, this is the best Spidey film yet: strong, bold and well-acted. Its main problem — besides a bloated running time and only adequate 3-D — is that you can’t help but experience pangs of deja vu, since director Sam Raimi’s very good “Spider-Man” debuted on the screen about 10 years ago. Fortunately, the story and character show greater dimension here and there’s a different love interest. And while “Spider-Man 3″ crammed in too much, “The Amazing Spider-Man” takes a less-is- more approach, and it pays off.
Review by The Village Voice
The Amazing Spider-Man, an inexcusably good reboot-thing from director Marc Webb, celebrates the heartwarming arachno-genetic bar mitzvah in which a boy becomes a spider, and a spider becomes a man, a rite of passage last observed in Sam Raimi’s uneven but often pretty great trilogy in the oh’s.
And there’s definitely no getting around the film’s resemblance to Raimi’s version, partly because both directors made only minor deviations from the original comics. Additionally, the screenplay is by venerable old Alvin Sargent, who worked on Raimi’s films, this time with James Vanderbilt and Steve Kloves.
In the first 45 minutes of any superhero’s origin movie, nobody is super, and a bunch of busy plot threads converge toward a moment everyone already anticipates. It’s kind of a formality at this point, like a commencement address, and it’s generally relieved only by anomalies like Robert Downey Jr.’s charisma or General Zod inside that hoop thing.
Review by Roger Ebert
We live in an age of speed-up, which may explain why the “Spider-Man” franchise feels the need for a reboot only 10 years after its first film, and five years after the most recent one. In its broad strokes, “The Amazing Spider-Man” is a remake of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” (2002), but it’s not the broad strokes we care about. This is a more thoughtful film, and its action scenes are easier to follow in space and time. If we didn’t really need to be told Spidey’s origin story again, at least it’s done with more detail and provides better reasons for why Peter Parker throws himself into his superhero role.
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