The Amazing Spider-Man Reviews
Top CriticThis is a grittier webslinger saga, led by a Peter Parker with swagger and angst and a tone defined more by emotional resonance than wide-eyed wonder. It still has plenty of fizz.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
This might be a fun summer blockbuster if only it even remotely needed to exist.
The Amazing Spider-Man is considerably more fun-and, yes, even touching-than so premature a reboot had any right to be.
On the whole, it's passable stuff, a surprise, given how mechanical the masked character seemed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
If you've seen half a dozen superhero films, and the box office results suggest you have, then you've also seen what "The Amazing Spider-Man" has to offer.
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| Original Score: C
At 28, Garfield's slightly older than Maguire was when he played Peter Parker in 2002, but his combination of fresh-faced innocence, nervous agitation and wry humor is immediately appealing.
Here comes another Spider-dude: This Andrew Garfield guy. So he'd better be really something, right? Well, as it happens, he is.
This hugely elaborate production is supposed to be the reboot of a foundering franchise, but rebooting a computer wipes the silicon slate clean. In the movie, what's old is old again.
Brings fresh faces and 3-D bells and whistles to the adventures of a moody nerd-boy who gets bitten by a radioactive arachnid and morphs into a smart-talking, web-slinging, thug-busting superhero.
How amazing can it be? We all just saw this movie when "Spider-Man" came out a decade ago.
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| Original Score: C+
It spends a lot of time improving Spidey's gear -- textured Spandex, stronger webbing -- but fails to do the one thing it was created to do: bring something new to a familiar tale.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The idea that to be rendered superhuman is neither some sombre moral privilege nor a queasy Faustian temptation but a prelude to ungovernable slapstick might be just what the genre needs.
Now that all the fussy exposition has been taken care of, the real fun can begin in earnest: Long may he weave.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The Amazing Spider-Man is at least better than Raimi's Spider-Man 3, which was a mess.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's a nice try, but you wish all this talent could bring us something we haven't seen before. Sorry, Spidey.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Mr. Webb's Spider-Man movie works only because he keeps the whole package, at least until the requisite final blowout, tethered to his two appealing leads.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
With great stories come great responsibilities. This one doesn't measure up.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
This is the second-best Spider-Man movie yet made. In the previous trilogy, only Spider-Man 2 surpasses it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
More honourable than "amazing," the latest reboot of the Spider-man franchise brings Marvel Comics web-slinging super-hero down to earth, in a mostly satisfactory way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The whiz-bang stuff doesn't kick in until the Peter-Gwen relationship (which is the best thing in the movie) is firmly established.
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| Original Score: B
This fourth installment is a complete reboot, returning to the web-slinger's creation story, and Garfield, more than any other factor, contributes to the sense of a darker vision along the lines of The Dark Knight.
... if you're not sick of superhero movies by now, this is a relatively decent one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
None of this is new to us, but Garfield and Webb make it feel convincingly fresh and exciting.
From the first image of sensory awakening to the final acceptance of adult responsibility, it pulses with the warm blood of a very human hero.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
The nerve-racking duality of his character's situation is all there in Garfield's face and body language.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Director Marc Webb's action-adventure is grounded in a recognizable reality, but is also full of thrills. It's dark and mysterious, but doesn't skimp on fun.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
If you think you've seen this all before - you have. Yet you haven't seen it quite like this - so shiny, so spectacular, so literally "Amazing."
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
For all its underlying cynicism, the new Spidey picture is pretty damn good.
There's something inherently depressing about what this movie says about the state of summer blockbusters in general and superhero movies in particular.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
As a new chapter in the superpowered arachnid saga, it stands on its own quite nicely, focusing more on human emotions than on a panoply of special effects.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Garfield and Stone are good enough to ensure that you won't miss their predecessors, but you may well wonder where Doc Ock is now that we really need him.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Watching Garfield swinging through New York or toying with criminals after he captures them is reason enough to welcome another telling of the tale.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Even though the story is familiar it's hand to not get drawn into its own unique web.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Whatever your thoughts about rebooting the Spider-Man franchise after a mere five years in mothballs, The Amazing Spider-Man winds up being a thrilling and, occasionally, even exhilarating spin on a familiar saga.
An inexcusably good reboot-thing...
Do we really need another Spider-Man movie? As long as it's this much fun - yes, yes, we do.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
If we didn't really need to be told Spidey's origin story again, at least it's done with more detail and provides better reasons for why Peter Parker throws himself into his superhero role.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
What's most amazing in The Amazing Spider-Man turns out to be not the shared sensations of blockbuster wow! the picture elicits, but rather the shared satisfactions of intimate awww.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
I don't really see why the Spidey reboot was needed right now, but The Amazing Spider-Man has its virtues. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are stellar and director Marc Webb has crafted a Spider-Man that touches the heart.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Sometimes dull and mostly uninspired, it's much less a satisfying reboot like "Batman Begins'' than a pointless rehash in the mode of "Superman Returns.''
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Garfield plays Peter as more of a misunderstood outsider, a rebel with a chip on his shoulder, a guy who wasn't afraid to stand up to the class bully even before he underwent his transformation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A mostly slick, entertaining and emotionally involving recombination of fresh and familiar elements.
Leaping back onto the screen with a new cast, crew, costume and a whole new array of daddy issues, The Amazing Spider-Man reboots the top grossing Marvel franchise to altogether satisfying results.
We're never far from romance or laughs, and at times 'The Amazing Spider-Man' feels like a romcom upgraded to include 3D and industrial cobwebs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
