Recently I was tormented by the new Amazing Spiderman - 3D by director Marc Webb. Here is my review. (warning: contains spoilers/cynicism)

First, the theater: Flix Brewhouse in Round Rock, Texas. A pretty neat place. Tip one: Before the movie starts they will take your food order. If you would like to eat your meal during the movie then wait until the movie starts. Otherwise; they will bring it on out and you will have most of it gone before the movie starts.
I had the tater skins. If you also like tater skins then save your money for a box of TGI Fridays frozen tater skins cause they are a helluva lot better than the sht-on-a-shingle that Flix serves.

As the movie began I notice the right lens of my 3D glasses looked more like shades. After about 5 minutes I was developing a headache and had seen no appearance of a 3D effect. I paged the usher. He walked up and said, "Is it the glasses? I'll take care of it right away, sir." Cool, I'm not the only one. We all got a bad batch and he's getting us more. There was only a handful of people in this first run of the day.
After about 20 minutes and no more sign of this guy, I call him back. I ask him what's up with the glasses and he tells me the problem is fixed.

I dunno how they mess up or fix the new 3D stuff. But it'd be nice if he'd let us know up front, "It's NOT the glasses. I just dunno what I'm doing so I gotta get a pro to show me where the 'turn on 3D' button is on the projector."

And THEN we had 3D... sorta. Or not. I'm through with 3D movies. Don't get me wrong, I love 3D movies. But the only person who has actually gone out of their way to produce one is James Cameron's Avatar. James and his movie is a worthless sack of beetle juice; but the movie FX were well worth overlooking Cameron's cynical view of evil humans to see it in 3D. Every so-called "3D" movie since then has been a 2D movie with some lazy 3D FX scattered around the movie. If you saw the 3D trailer, you probably saw all it had to offer. That'll be an extra $4, please!

When I saw the previews I thought it was about "what happened to Peter's parents." Yes and No. Sam Rami spent 3 movies weaving a storyline with some cool characters and FX. Along comes Marc Webb and says, "Sam Rami... his work is crap. I bet I can eff it up real good." Everything about the Spiderman story you learned from Sam, Marc screwed it up. It's a whole, brave new world. Everything you know is now wrong. That's one reason I quit watching BatMan. How many friggin ways can his parents die and he meet the Joker?

How did Uncle Ben die? What all really happened? Sam tied it all together in three movies with a twist here and there. Marc said "Screw a twist. Let Peter watch the old man get killed and be done with it." The only twist is, where did the dude go? No one knows.
In the first SpiderMan Peter went to college. We met a professor; one armed Dr. Conners. Apparently in the comics Dr. Conners becomes the Lizard. In Amazing Conners is a scientist for Oscorp who used to work with Pete's folks. No Norman Osborn nor his son in this movie. No newspaper nor Jameson. No Mary Jane Watson.

Mary Jane is replaced by Gwen, a gal that Pete is not supposed to meet until he and Mary Jane break up and he discovers Gwen, Jameson's secretary. (or however the details panned out) I gotta say that the gal who played Gwen was very cute and played a very sweet character.

In every movie based off a Stan Lee creation, Stan gets a cameo, maybe two seconds at most. I'll give a wink and nod to Marc for giving Stan more play time in Amazing. And it was pretty amusing too.

Aunt May and Uncle Ben are played by Sally Field and Martin Sheen. They shove some Mr. Ed teeth into Sheen's head for some unknown reason. Consistency! Uncle Ben is still and pantie-waste! He may now look like an inbred redneck but he still holds true to liberal sissy philosophy. "Is that big bad Flash still being a bully? Did you beat up the bully? Wow, you suck as bad as bullies do now. Fighting is never the right thing to do. You hurt my lil heart. Now I have to go take some ecstasy."

But gee, when Ben "thou shalt not fight" Parker runs into a robber with a gun, well you gotta disarm the bad guys!

Pete still gets bit by a genetically modified spider. But first off, here's something I never understood: spiders don't sling web out their wrist, they shoot it out their @$$. So what's up with Peter? Why isn't he swinging from skyscraper from skyscraper by his @$$?
And another thing on this topic: Spiders don't shoot out "web." They produce a string. The web is a tedious creation. So why is it Spiderman can, at-will, shoot a web or string or a web-glop that glues folks' mouths shut or hands to the wall or whatever?
And why isn't Spiderman bent over and running around bad guys farting a spider web all over them?
You ever see a spider go down a web string and go back up? How does he do it? He goes down then climbs back up leaving string behind him. I've always wondered how it is that Spiderman's web will let him ease down to do things like swap slobbers with some chick in an alley then once he's done playing tonsil tag be springs back up. WTF? An at-will retracting web?

What's more; how many of you have ever fought a spider? Probably not many. Why? You see a spider. You step on it. It dies. You go on with your day without giving it another thought. So why is Spiderman able to accept such brutal beating from super-villains?

In Amazing Spiderman Peter doesn't form the ability to produce a web. It's a scientific gadget he steals from the lab. (see his wrists in the image above) That's at least two thefts in this movie that Parker commits. (the other theft, he steals a bottle of milk from the store when the robber leaves. Hey, it does the body good.) This web gadget has a limited ability only good for so many shots like a gun. But in true Hollywood fashion, like any "hero gun," it'll never run out of bullets unless the script needs it to.

And of course the battles still cry out in true French philosophy. What? What's that mean? Well, all the people band together to help Spidy out. They chunk sht at the bad guys and yell taunts like "You mess with one of us you mess with us all.... that's right!" But the truth is all these bystanders are of little consequence. Just like the French. But they like to claim a victory when someone else does most of the fighting for them.

The bad guys of Spiderman, Amazing is consistent on that point. The bad guys go tearing shat up and killing everyone in their way. But then, after an insufferable battle that doesn't kill the teen known as Spiderman, Peter remembers what his horse-faced uncle told him. Fighting is not the answer. You just gotta sit down over a mocha latte and talk this sht out, bro. If you'll go all Care Bear all over these pricks and just open your heart to understanding, you'll realize that these bad guys aren't really bad. They just got some coping issues that would challenge Dr. Phil. All the devastation and death is an unfortunate byproduct of a grave misunderstanding. Once Spiderman "gets it" the bad guys are like, "Ah crap. Yeah, um... my bad on all that death and destruction thing." Then they submit themselves to jail or suicide to make it all better.

Then Michael Moore produces a documentary giving his spin on the facts of how all this could have been avoided had the Republicans not cok-blocked Universal Health Care years ago.

Had only Rosie or Oprah been there to get the bad guys to cry on TV at the start of the show, they could have pulled million$ in donations, this waste of a feature film would have been shorter and almost as entertaining as the TeleTubbies and I could have gone on with my life.

That's my review!