By Hindustan Times
Picking from where ex-Spider Man director Sam Raimi left off, Marc Webb seems to have passed the critics' test of expectations from a Spidey franchise. The clear winner, unanimously, is Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Spider Man.
Film: The fantastic Spider-Man
Director: Marc Webb
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Denis Leary, Irrfan Khan
Synopsis: Peter Parker finds a clue that will help him understand why his parents disappeared when he was young. His path puts him on a collision course with Dr. Curt Connors, his father's former partner.
Andrew Pulver, The Guardian
Rating: 4/5
The gear-shift within the superhero movie is now unmistakeable. Where after they aimed to actually replicate the experience of reading a comic book book, they now strive to be edgy, risk-taking dramas that do greater than simply pay lip-service to their characters' emotional lives.
Parker's abandonment issues have nevertheless loomed large in all Spider-Man films, and people searching for deeper shading of Parker's emotional make-up will certainly be pleased to look them.
Be that because it may, Webb successfully treads an excellent line between keeping the hardcore superhero-movie fans happy and injecting a dose of meaningful affect. Parker is in general reckoned to be essentially the most "relatable" figure within the superhero canon, however the pastel-bright synthetics of the sooner movies did little to dispel the sense that the comic-book world could only construct its characters out of clunking great blocks of melodrama.
In re-engineering Parker into the introspective, uncertain male more typical of his previous film, Webb is aided by an awesome performance from Andrew Garfield, who brings a genial unflappability that permits him to barter the often-ludicrous demands of the superhero plotline. On the same time, Webb also shows an unarguable facility for the more traditional action elements of the story, and the 3D certainly helps: he pulls off some properly nauseating shots as Parker dives off skyscrapers, rescues kids from falling, and the like.
It's the successul synthesis of the 2 – action and emotion – that implies this Spider-Man is as enjoyable because it is impressive: Webb's control of mood and texture is near faultless as his film switches from teenage sulks to exhilarating airborne pyrotechnics. It is just towards the end, when there is not any choice but to revert to CGI – as Rhys Ifans' Lizard goes at the rampage – that The fantastic Spider-Man gets rather less amazing: cartoony reptilian carnage has just lost its power to enthral if it's rather obviously happening inside a computer.
Robbie Collin, The Telegraph
Rating: 4/5
So for Spider-Man to register in today’s superhero-saturated market, he has to do something greater than pull on a candy-wrapper costume, swing from the similar skyscrapers and pander to the geeks within the cheap seats. Fortunately, Sony and director Marc Webb have get a hold of an excessively creditable, very marketable alternative, and it owes more to the hot success of Twilight than anyone in a fancy dress and cape.
Simply put, The fantastic Spider-Man is the primary superhero movie aimed primarily at women. The brand new Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) isn't any goofy teenage geek within the Tobey Maguire mould; he’s a bright, introverted young man with a furrowed brow, a Tintin quiff and a pasty Home Counties complexion. Garfield appears to be playing him as a half-gangly, half-graceful riff on Eduardo Saverin, his character from David Fincher’s Facebook chronicle, The Social Network.
In fact, if Webb’s film has a weak suit, it’s the supervillainy: Ifans’s character is underdeveloped, and his putative tragic fall is more of a depressing tumble. Some comic-book fans have also criticised the “unconvincing” lighting tricks employed to bring Ifans’s scaly alter ego to life, although I can’t say I’m entirely clear what a powerful rendering of a big angry lizard in torn purple trousers and a lab coat might look like.
But that’s to not say The superb Spider-Man is brief on blockbuster testosterone, and the film’s second half offers good enough bungee-swinging through Manhattan’s concrete canyons, immaculately rendered in vertiginous, silky-smooth 3D, to meet thrill-seekers of either sex.
What’s refreshing is the way in which Webb makes those action sequences count – with a plot that rests almost entirely at the plausibly tingly romance between his two leads.
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
Rating: A-
A friskier, sweeter-natured variation at the story Sam Raimi told in his recent trilogy, with greater emphasis on human relations than on special effects, this Spidey reboot refreshes an old story in the course of the on-trend notion of creating a Marvel superhero less...super-heroic. With an effortlessly winning Andrew Garfield now within the title role and the irresistible Emma Stone by his side as Gwen Stacy, probably the most delicious highschool girlfriend a bug- and love-bitten young man could hope to woo, The superb Spider-Man would be the first big-ticket, big-budget, big-action-sequence comic-book movie that still doubles as a lilting coming-of-age indie.
SpidermanI mean an indie at its very best, with smart attention paid to coming-of-age issues, including the prickly shyness of a social outsider who's a very simple target for bullies, the sexual and romantic awkwardness of a first-timer in love, the run-amok emotions of adolescence, and the unrest of an adolescent who feels abandoned by his father. Of course, attention could also be paid to a supervillain: the Lizard, a giant, destructive reptile played with impressive commitment to scaliness by Notting Hill's Rhys Ifans.
Through it all, Garfield fills both his slackerish Peter Parker identity in addition to his Spider-Man rubberwear with star-quality confidence. Mixing self-effacing sweetness with believable teen boy arrogance, then adding a wee drop of snark, the exciting British-American actor with the JFK Jr. dark attractiveness defies anyone to hate him because he's beautiful — or because he isn't Tobey Maguire. And any time the actor shares a scene with the radiant Ms. Stone...well, the 2 are a chemistry experiment gone as blindingly right as reptilian Dr. Curt Connors' little lab test goes terribly wrong. What's most amazing within the Amazing Spider-Man seems to be not the shared sensations of blockbuster wow! the image elicits, but rather the shared satisfactions of intimate awww.
Mark Adams, Mirror
That web-slinging superhero Spider-Man is back - again – and against the entire odds this 3D reboot is an engagingly action-packed and freewheeling affair, blessed with perfect chemistry between Brit Andrew Garfield and Hollywood star Emma Stone and a few grandstanding lighting tricks moments.
Young British actor Andrew Garfield is superb because the smart but mild-mannered Peter Parker – combining awkward nerdyness with an underlying strength – and provides the film a competent backbone.
There are some changes naturally enough – love interest this time is available in the blonde type of Gwen Stacy (played with charm to spare by the fantastic Emma Stone) and for some reason The Daily Bugle, where Peter sold snaps of Spider-Man within the original films (and the comic book series) is gone – but this re-telling is breezily watchable, despite a hefty running time.
The 3D works extremely well on the subject of his swinging his way across the Big Apple, though loses impact in relation to old-fashioned dialogue and straightforward one-on-one scenes. Luckily the film is blessed with the delightfully confident and colourful Emma Stone…she could be a little old to be playing high-schoolers (she is 22 later this year), but has such grace and poise – in addition to perfect comedy timing – that oddly she finally ends up being the actual beating heart of the film, with Garfield available to balance the geekiness with the superhero wisecracking.
The villain this time round is Oscorp scientist Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) who gets transformed into the scaly beastie The Lizard. Yes he's powerful and harsh and green-skinned and has a tail, but somehow lacks the sheer villainous of alternative of Spider-Man’s usual enemies. Rest easy though…the post credits point to a brand new villain waiting within the wings.
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Rating: 2.5/4
That being said, The superb Spider-Man has its virtues, chief among them its two stars: Andrew Garfield as Peter, the nerd turned crimefighter, and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, the daughter of a police chief (Denis Leary) who can not help being drawn into Peter's web. Garfield, so good within the Social Network and onstage in Death of a Salesman, puts his own stamp on Peter and his drive to unravel the mystery of his parents' death. And Stone just jumps to life onscreen. Gwen was played by Stone's The assistance costar Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-Man 3, but her tackle the role is distinctly her own. The superb Spider-Man delivers in its action and flying scenes as Spidey fights the villain, a.k.a. The Lizard (Rhys Ifans). But that's due diligence. The core of the brand new movie is the affection story. It's no accident that Marc Webb was chosen to direct. Webb is the person behind (500) Days of Summer, the 2009 hit with Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt that may be among the best movie romances of the last decade. Webb never loses touch with the film's emotional through line. And he allows time and space for Garfield and Stone, both stellar, to show a high-flying adventure into something impassioned and moving. A Spider-Man that touches the center. Now that truly is amazing.
