I wish to tender my apologies to SRK for a scathing
review I wrote on RA-ONE a few years back. I had suffered a three day headache
after suffering the unimaginative video game story. His intentions were noble.
He wanted to set the benchmark for the techno razzle dazzle in India and tried
perhaps to impress his son, something I, in his position too would not have
dithered from doing. I enjoy the supermen stories and the bordering on
unbelievable stunts with as much gurgling boyish happiness as my son would. The
underlying victory of goodness is never lost on me. But I just could not digest
the lack of narrative and any script sense in that movie. I thought he had made
a hash of good potential those supermen movies held promise of.
He can rest easy now. The crown has shifted to a new
contender. If you wish to learn how to make a hash of a nice franchisee, watch
Amazing Spiderman 2. It has everything going for it. Great looking actors
Andrew Garfield, lovely Emma Stone, access to big budget special effects, wonderful Sally Fields who never disappoints
and yet the movie ends up being one of the worst superhero movies made.
I had two quick snoozes in the first half while main
characters droned poorly written conversations, endlessly discussing the
regimentation of romance, boring clichéd saves, unfunny muffled one liners and unimpressive
actions scenes though not tacky. In contrast the Amazing Spiderman 1 was a
masterpiece handling the expert depiction of vulnerability by a good looking boyish
Garfield with panache. In this he goes around with confused expressions
apparently a nod to his distraction with a lovely Emma while his duty, to save
one person and destroying 10 buildings and 100 cars in the process, continues half-heartedly.
The narration too was not seamless and seemed
extremely disjointed almost as if the makers were not sure what they wanted to
do with the footage on hand. My main grudge with the makers of the super hero
movies these days is that they have forgotten that children viewers around the
world own the copyright to enjoy these superheroes and their antics and they
are least interested in a psychological in depth analysis of the superhero’s
internal struggle with his emotional imbalance and confusion with how to
execute his super powers for the welfare of the society. Excuse me but can we
cut down on the gooey part and allow the super heroes to do what they did best.
Save the world!
So then in comparison with RA-ONE at least it had
Bhare Naina as a saving grace. This has none unless you count an almost funny
exchange between Garfield and Emma as one. I wondered what Jamie Foxx was doing
here. The poor artiste is badly wasted. My heart sank when towards the end a
new villain makes an appearance and went “Oh No Not again” but then good sense
prevailed and the credits rolled. Wink Wink. You know what’s coming next.
Amazing Spiderman 3. Ok I am getting out of the country when that releases!