This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Mike M’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Overall, a very enjoyable film. They did a great job re-visiting the origin story, without having to spend 2/3 of the movie doing it, and brought in a cool new villain that spent most of the end of the movie kicking Spidey's tail.
I will say that while I agree with most that Andrew Garfield did an amazing job making Peter Parker his own, I personally think that he tends to overact every once in a while. Not that it really diminished the role here, but I did catch myself groaning at times when he was acting the rebellious teenager. But regardless, still a great pick overall.
I love Emma Stone. Absolutely love most everything she's ever done. And she didn't disappoint here. The scenes of awkward teenage love with Peter were so fun to watch. Comparing her to Kirsten Dunst from the first three movies isn't really fair to Dunst, mostly due to the fact that they play completely different characters. Dunst was more than adequate in one and two, while nobody was good in three. Back to Stone though, a terrific effort from her here.
And to Rhys Ifans. Absolutely brilliant as the over achieving scientist. Friggin' terrible as a walking, talking hybrid-lizard monster. Whether that was due to Ifans or a poor choice of melding CGI with voice over, I'm not sure. I kinda wished they had left him mostly human, but gave him extra strength and the ability to regrow body parts instead but.....
My biggest annoyance with this movie, and it's not a huge deal for most, was the score. Anyone that knows me, knows I put a lot of emphasis on the music of the movie. Whether it's an orchestral score or using songs from various bands, the music can make or break a movie. The score here was done by James Horner, who I rank as a top 5 composer easily. He's iconic for Titanic, but also did Avatar, Braveheart, Aliens, amongst others. A favorite of mine was the soundtrack to A Beautiful Mind. I've listened to that CD hundreds of times. And I'm quite certain that several of the pieces used in Spider-man were either ripped from sampled from the Beautiful Mind soundtrack. I know it's not even a small deal to most, but for someone like me that gets into the music, it was nagging at me throughout the entire movie. Friggin irritating to watch a damn good movie only to be stuck thinking about the music.
But anyways.....back to the main review. Overall, I did enjoy the movie a lot. Everyone did their part really well and the director's got my vote for future installments. The music bugged me, but didn't kill the movie. It probably won't bug me as much the second time as I'll be expecting it but still....
I'd say it's a must-see of the summer.