Wednesday, 30 April 2014

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2: A regular popcorn fling! Nothing new to offer!! [2.5/5]

How can you not find it amusing when Spider-man himself starts humming his own signature tune in midst of his early face-off with some notorious criminals! In the very next, you get to notice that how miserable, messy and misunderstood a superhero’s normal life can be when at home. Interesting take but that’s that. If you’re seriously looking for something additional, something extra to the previous Garfield starrer movie, I have to break your hearts coldly. Marc Webb’s second in the series THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 has nothing new to offer and is a regular popcorn movie that trusts blindly on its own set of rules to entertain.

Taking story forward from where it ended in the first, the quest for his parent’s inexplicable disappearance still drives Peter Parker anxious and restless when he learns his childhood buddie Harry [Dane DeHaan] is now the new inheritor of OsCorp., after his father’s death. Meanwhile, Max [Jamie Foxx]-an almost invisible ordinary yet extremely susceptible loner and an electric engineer at OsCorp is the new accidental victim of its illegal human-animal mutation program. The ‘Electro’ is his new avatar with super-electric powers. Now, Harry has some hereditary illness that demands Spiderman’s blood as its venom and his only hope is Electro. Together, they are on to wreck-ruin & smash the New York City and the lives of its people, and Spider-man has to prove himself again, in hard times when his love life too is not very smooth.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 shows great promise in glimpse and pieces where a humorous, realistic and sympathetic touch to Spider-man’s regular day-to-day life is being portrayed but soon, it gets derailed or rather I would say takes a U-turn to its own guarded path to entertain, entertain and entertain…and that’s when the jinx of getting in routine hits. Even the drama here is so ‘seen-it-before & sensed-it-before’. Is the fear of losing his love while he’s on his ‘saving the world’ mission not a typical superhero setback?? Also, the rise of villain here is very much a forced practice without having much of a strong explanatory shield to it. Though the visual effects are at par, especially Spider-man’s final face-off with Electro and Harry-turned into-Green Goblin at the magically lit Times Square, it is the sparkling chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone that pulls off most of the scenes.

The 3D effects are worth taking the ride. Watching Spider-man shuffling and juggling in the center of New York City skyscrapers, that too in a rhythmic slow & fast motion technique, is more than just a visual treat. Before getting thinned and restricted by VFX extravaganza in later part, Jamie Foxx makes an incredible impact with his simpleton Max in the first. Emma can never get it wrong with her twinkling and ‘communicating in good volumes’ eyes. Dane DeHaan plays it well but his major will strike soon in the next as suggested at the end.

There should not be any expression of surprise if I say THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 belongs to Andrew Garfield. He’s witty. He’s charming. He’s expressive. And he shoulders the responsibility in a skilled manner. I wish the plot would have been more responsible with a new, fresh and innovative approach. The glimpse and suggestions are there in portions. Watchable! [2.5/5]  

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