Review: The Amazing Spiderman

Right, lets get the facetious bit out of the way first. The title's wrong. Yes I know it's taken from the comic book and it's a big fan favourite but it's just misselling the film. It really should be the quite good spiderman, the enjoyable spiderman, the better than average... you get the point. There's lots of good things about this. Emma Stone is as watchable as ever. (Even though she is obviously too old for high school.) She has an ability to let personality come through what is essentially a cartoon character. Sally Field and the non more Uncle/fatherly Martin Sheen are strong back up. Sheen's new teeth are a little disconcerting though. Andrew Garfield is likeable and between him and stone there's hardly a conversation that gets finished intelligibly (in a good way). Garfield also looks the part in the suit and more importantly for the modern hero, he has great hair (the way it stands up is the one truly amazing part of the film.) Rhys Ifans is solid but isn't given the time and space to become a truly threatening villain and this is part of the film's problem. It doesn't have a climax, well it does but it comes half way through and then runs at a level from there. It's an enjoyable enough film don't get me wrong but it misses out on the rousing finale that you'd expect from a superhero flick. There are another two on the way though so hopefully the next will tighten things up a bit. Stick around through the credits for a shadowy hint to the big bad behind the next film.

Early morning mental meandering.

Sometimes your mind just wanders, do you find that? Mine does, all over the place. for instance this morning I ended up wondering if Alanis Morissette is cleverer than she's given credit for. Bear with me on this. When she wrote and sang 'Ironic' she was rightly derided because most of the examples she warbled about weren't true Irony, more just bad luck. However, to write a song about irony and then give these wrong examples is surely about as ironic as it gets, so my theory is that maybe she did it on purpose. What do we think?