The Smell of Popcorn

I should prob­a­bly say that going into “Amaz­ing Spider-Man,” I was com­pletely unfa­mil­iar with the cin­e­matic exploits of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy and who­ever else resides in Spidey’s uni­verse. Mean­ing, unlike a great major­ity, I haven’t seen Sam Raimi’s orig­i­nal tril­ogy star­ring Tobey Maguire, and there­fore have no unfor­tu­nate pre­con­cep­tions of watch­ing a reboot shame­lessly propped up not even ten years after. Which is a great thing, trust me. Spidey’s story is so well-known, even to me, that “Amaz­ing Spider-Man” is mostly pre­dictable and con­tains no out­stand­ing sur­prises — but yet man­ages to be sat­is­fy­ingly enter­tain­ing after the 2-hours-plus run­time comes to an end. “Amaz­ing Spider-Man” is like the guinea pig for a cat­e­gory of super­hero movies that fit in between that of “Avengers” and “Dark Knight,” nei­ther a shiny, huge block­buster nor a darker and con­sid­er­ably smarter spin on our dear cos­tumed vig­i­lantes. It’s a mix between the two, more relat­able and down-to-earth. Younger kids will love it, cer­tainly. Teenagers? Too basic, cute, and schmaltzy.

“Amaz­ing Spider-Man” opens with a young Peter Parker who sees his spooked par­ents, includ­ing his sci­en­tist father (Camp­bell Scott), bid him a tear­ful adieu, with the fate­ful promise that they’ll be back one day, etc. Fast-foward to now, and Peter (Andrew Garfield) is now a lanky, twitchy and slightly geeky high-school stu­dent. You know the story. Bul­lied, even if he’s not exactly a geek and more of a loner, he catches the eye of the appar­ently fault­less Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and they start an adorably cutesy and awk­ward romance, with heart­felt chem­istry that might have some­thing to do with Garfield and Stone dat­ing in real life. (Hey, you never know…) Peter’s always felt neglected and alone, though, and when he dis­cov­ers his father’s hid­den notes in the base­ment of the house of his uncle (Mar­tin Sheen) and aunt (Sally Field) — where’s he lived ever since his par­ents left — it leads him to Dr. Curt Con­nors (Rhys Ifans), a one-armed biol­o­gist at Oscorp who worked with his father on some highly secre­tive sci­en­tific work regard­ing cel­lu­lar regen­er­a­tion and what­not. How­ever, every­thing turns on its heels very fast — Peter gets bit­ten by per­haps what is now the most famous spi­der in cin­e­matic his­tory. As he deals with the sud­den trans­for­ma­tion and the sub­se­quent, new­found skills that come with it, he’s soon forced to real­ize that yes, with great power comes great respon­si­bilty, espe­cially as some sci­en­tific blun­ders lead to Dr. Con­nors to becom­ing a mutant lizard.

Here’s the thing that ticks me off about “Amaz­ing Spider-Man.” Though Garfield and Stone give excel­lent, lik­ably sweet per­for­mances together, their char­ac­ters are so under­de­vel­oped and one-note that it becomes very absurd. I under­stand if Marc Webb, the direc­tor, wanted to make a super­hero film con­tain­ing ele­ments of every­day high-school angst with grounded char­ac­ters. But what ended up being trans­lated to the big screen is that our char­ac­ters, none more than Peter and Gwen them­selves, sim­ply don’t react accord­ingly to what’s going on — look, a big green lizard in a high school! — and it becomes annoy­ing, and very unfor­tu­nate for “Amaz­ing Spider-Man” as it as it reveals gap­ing, lazy plot holes in the story. A flawed script aside, some true thrills occur when Peter puts on his mask and becomes Spidey for the first time. From the amus­ingly inven­tive sequences from the morning-after of the trans­for­ma­tion, to when he bat­tles street crim­i­nals, jump­ing from dark­ened alley to alley, these moments have a inar­guably fun energy. (The many fight scenes with the Lizard grow old fast, though.) And if you’ve seen the orig­i­nal “Spider-Man” movies, even the good parts must come with a glazed haze of thick deja-vu that’s impos­si­ble to shake off as you watch the action unfold on well-worn ter­ri­tory. As for me, from watch­ing only “Amaz­ing Spider-Man” alone, noth­ing feels out­stand­ingly new or orig­i­nal. It’s a fine enough film, but not one that feels par­tic­u­larly inspired and remarkable.

“Amaz­ing Spider-Man”: B+