The Amazing Spider-Man 2—the bigger, brighter, louder sequel to director Marc Webb's reboot of the Spidey franchise—is, in the immortal words of the Berenstain Bears, too much birthday.
Not because the evil rise of its main big bad Electro (Max, played by an uncharacteristically sluggish Jamie Foxx) starts after he's forced to work late at Oscorp on his birthday, but because there were simply too many people invited to his party. Between Electro, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and an orgy of eye-popping CGI, there's just too much going on at Spidey's latest shindig. And it's easy to walk out wondering if—like in the aftermath of many a college rager—anyone actually had any fun.
Spoiler alert: Minor spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 follow.
After a cursory back-story flashback, Amazing Spider-Man 2 swings right into action. Peter (the always-affable Andrew Garfield) is late to his high school graduation for the same reason most of us were: he's chasing a truck full of stolen Oscorp plutonium through Manhattan. The culprit is Sytsevich, and he's quickly nabbed by Spider-Man, who makes it to the ceremony just in time to miss Gwen's ominously foreshadowing valedictorian speech and collect his diploma. (But remember Sytsevich's face—it'll be relevant two hours and a half-dozen subplots later.)
From there, the movie spins such a tangled web of plots it becomes nearly impossible to figure out which one, if any of them, to care about—or what the movie wants to be. Is it an emo rom-com about Peter deciding if Gwen is better off without him? Is it the origin story of Electro, Spidey's erstwhile number-one fan and unappreciated Oscorp employee who gets transformed after falling into a tank of electric eels and decides to take it out on the webslinger because our hero forgot his name and people laughed at him or something? Is it maybe the tale of Harry Osborn inheriting Oscorp and deciding that Spider-Man's arachnid-enhanced blood is the only thing that can save him from the same disease that took his father? Or is it about Peter Parker figuring out what happened to his parents and why they left? The Amazing Spider-Man 2 tries to be all of them, and manages to fall short of being any of them.
It's a shame, too, because the first hour shows a lot of promise. Garfield, probably the biggest Spider-Man fan to ever play Spider-Man, is naturally charismatic even behind giant bug eyes, and he and Stone (who are dating IRL) play off of each other effortlessly. The gorgeous, swooping shots of Spidey flying through Manhattan are the same rush of adrenaline they've always been, and there are even a few solid laugh lines early on. However, by the time Harry and Electro team up to "catch a spider"/destroy New York/whatever it is they do, it's nearly impossible to keep track of who is mad about what and why. And when Electro proclaims, "I had a friend once; it didn't work out," it's really hard to take him seriously as a villain because he sounds so much like Grumpy Cat.
One bright spot is DeHaan, who seems to be the enjoying himself, chewing up any scenery within reach as the deranged bad boy. By the time he shows up as the Green Goblin during one of the movie's umpteenth climaxes (it's a lot to tie all those plots together), your eyes may be exhausted, but you're glad to see someone who seems to be down to party.
We get it: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has to not only keep its own franchise going but also serve as a launchpad for the Venom and The Sinister Six spin-offs. But all of that could easily have fit into a simpler movie. (And consider yourself lucky that Shailene Woodley's Mary Jane Watson subplot got cut.) The constituent parts of this second Spidey installment are nice and all, but that's all they are: parts. And just when it seems like they're building to something, they come crashing down in a collapse that even Spider-Man couldn't stop.
