Tuesday at the Movies - July 10, 2012

A day late but not a dollar short (since we’re still free of charge), welcome to Week Twenty-Five of “Monday at the Movies,” in which I pregame for The Amazing Spider-Man with Emma Stone and the latter two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films.  (I reviewed Spider-Man [2002] back in May 2008.)

Easy A (2010) – There are some movie stars who can carry a film solely on charisma.  Perhaps the newest face in this crowd (which includes such personalities as Denzel Washington, Judi Dench, and Samuel L. Jackson) is Emma Stone who, while making her big debut in Superbad, garnered international attention for Easy A, a take-off on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in which Olive Penderghast (Stone) becomes the talk of her high school after a rumor about her romantic escapades takes on a life of its own.  I’m a sucker for literary updates (most of the time, at least, but I make no apologies for digging Twelfth Night by way of She’s the Man), and here the story works because it doesn’t use Hawthorne as a crutch but rather winks at the relationship and self- references itself in a clever way; a similar relationship with the John Hughes canon is fostered, as well, and the comparison is a successful one.  But as for charisma, Stone is insanely charming, extraordinarily gorgeous, and unceasingly hilarious as Olive; if the script is campy, it’s on her shoulders that the film succeeds.  Credit, too, should go to the supporting cast, which includes Stanley Tucci as Olive’s scene-stealing father, Thomas Haden Church as her favorite and most sympathetic teacher, and Amanda Bynes as the school’s antagonistic “Jesus freak,” an inverse Penny Pingleton.  Though the film relies on Olive’s webcam as a narrative guide, it’s a bad gimmick that works because of Stone’s aforementioned charm.  While Easy A may not yet be a classic like 10 Things I Hate About You, it deserves to stand in those ranks.

Spider-Man 2 (2004) – Under the capable direction of Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire’s second outing as Peter Parker stood for a long time as arguably the best comic book film (up until, y’know, The Dark Knight), and it’s still exceptionally strong almost a decade later.  Here we see the classic “second film” plotline of the hero questioning his place in society, finding trouble navigating the disjunct between secret identity and public persona, even – channeling the famous comic plotline – quitting the hero game for a time.  This thread is especially strong, ably guided by a strong screenplay which makes the webslinger’s struggle seem plausible but never forced.  Alfred Molina’s role as Doctor Octopus in particular contributes to the film’s success, layering the villain with a complicated mixture of pathos and psychosis.  Spider-Man 2 makes the smartest choice of all, which is to play itself almost completely straight, save for J.K. Simmons’s spot-on performance as J. Jonah Jameson (note to the rebooters – bring him back at all costs).  And if Spider-Man 2 is indeed a perfect superhero film, it’s because it avoids the temptation of the sequel to replicate and overfill, instead moving the series in a new direction and allowing its plotlines to breathe.  Reflecting on this film makes me think about the very nature of good reviews; it’s difficult to reach my standard 250 words because the film is exceptional.  In the words of Stan Lee, ’nuff said?

Spider-Man 3 (2007) – Take a breather.  Spider-Man 3 is not as bad as we remember.  The film is flawed, to be sure, but it’s not irredeemable; had it not been preceded by Spider-Man 2, things may have seemed different, but the film certainly suffers by comparison to its antecedent.  For the first hour, the film is strong, among the best of Raimi’s trilogy; consumed by revenge, Spider-Man hunts The Sandman while under the influence of a malicious alien symbiote which feeds on his vengeance and budding narcissism.  But the film escapes Raimi’s control near the beginning of the second act; the film is overfull, with Bryce Dallas Howard miscast as Gwen Stacy, who literally has nothing to do in this movie and whose absence would have no effect on the finished product.  What’s more, we have three villains (Sandman, Venom and New Goblin) who never get fully developed beyond shallow and poorly scripted motivations.  Worse, the film badly fumbles the symbiote plotline, opting for slapstick and easy laughs instead of focusing on the internal perversion and darkening of Spider-Man.  How much better might the film have been if we got a truly frightening Symbiote Spider-Man rather than the Emo Peter Parker we found tousling his hair and thrusting his pelvis?  What’s good about the previous films still holds – J.K. Simmons still aces his part, Thomas Haden Church as Sandman is another great villain – but Spider-Man 3 has a strong first act but spirals out of control like the Goblin’s glider.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!