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It took Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series three films to make the mistakes The Amazing Spider-Man is making in two. I speak as someone who both enjoyed and saw the merit of this rebooted film series, which threw the lanky, energetic Andrew Garfield into the role of Peter Parker. And there's still much to recommend about what he, director Marc Webb, and his co-stars are doing here: the film is much funnier and filled with the free-wheeling energy that defines Spider-Man as a comic book character. But it's also over-stuffed with plot and consequently struggles to invest the audience in any of it, since there's so much to get through and so many future films and spinoffs to set up.
The Amazing Spider-Man's flaws were somewhat unavoidable: it was re-running an origin story that we'd seen before and could not simply rely on Spidey's web-slinging to dazzle us. While Raimi's original take on the story could be frustratingly formal and creaky, a lot of Webb's re-casting really made sense: Sally Field and Martin Sheen were much more believable as blue-collar surrogate parents to Peter, Garfield's chemistry with Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy crackled, and Denis Leary gave a surprisingly intense and memorable performance as her father, whose death at the end of the first film gives this sequel a semblance of emotional stakes.
But while Raimi could get very easily bogged down in Spider-Man's mopey, sad-sack qualities (a core part of the comic book character), Webb wants to have lots of fun. Garfield is a willing and able partner for that, making Peter a motor-mouthed bundle of nerves who basically bounces off the walls as he fights gun-toting villains. It's something Raimi always struggled to capture, and Webb mostly nails it, but then struggles any time his story has to shift to a more serious gear.