The Amazing Spiderman: The not so amazing Spiderman

The Amazing Spiderman
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Denis Leary, Irrfan Khan
At: PVR & others
Rated: 6/10
Spiderman is back but his web this time is woven not so much around Manhattan’s eerily lit high-rises as it is around human emotions and teenage vulnerabilities.
The Hindi subtitle to this Hollywood biggie comes not just in its bewildering 2.26-hour length, but also in the way the human element is imposed on this splattering of a sci-fi, thriller, romantic mount.
The length of this film does cut into its snappiness, but then the director this time is in quite a languid mood for a change. His new Spiderman in Andrew Garfield has all kinds of issues — of a lost childhood, of being abandoned by parents without an explanation, of college woes and of teenage doubts.
Garfield, with his deep-set eyes and his bravado to not play all man by filling tears into them every now and then, does get going pretty well in his new spidey suit, grudgingly making you acknowledge that he is not a bad replacement really. His first dalliance with the web and spiders comes pretty late into the movie which takes time to linger over his parents, his upbringing in his uncle’s household and his college grapples. Down the line, he also battles quite a few insecurities that a diehard spidey buff may get impatient with.
But once the suit is on, the action is compelling as is the techno-savvy presentation which does better without the modern and irksome trapping of a 3D viewing.
However, despite the all apparent effort that has gone into re-inventing this superhero, it jumps the gun to suggest it is The Amazing Spiderman. It is an average kind of guy in an above average kind of effort and he does little to bring the bar up to those so-called amazing moments. The only amazing moment in the film was the last shot when he freezes over the full blue moon in a ready to jump into action gesture. The other one is when he is romancing the pretty blonde in Gwen Stacy played to the hilt by a wide-eyed Emma Stacy.
Sadly, our Indian link to the movie in Irrfan Khan, who plays the unexplained character of Dr Rajit Ratha, is totally rippleless — not because our Bollywood guy is incapable of histrionics but because the director really leaves him out of the proceedings totally.  By general standards, he has more footage in the film than Indian actors generally do in Hollywood movies, but that advantage gets stymied by the lack of a role that Khan is saddled with.
Other than that, do catch up with the Spidey with lots of popcorn and cola because you will have plenty of time to dig into it while he takes his time to swing around the buildings on the delicate yet sturdy webs he weaves with elan.
Source: The Sunday Pioneer, July 1, 2012

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