The Amazing Spider-Man

If we hadn't had Sam Raimi's excellent Spider-Man movie in 2002, this premature reboot might have seemed praiseworthy. It's perfectly OK, but rather pointless--like listening to a joke you've already heard the punch line to. We slog through a pokey retelling of Spider-Man's origin story before eventually arriving at some halfway decent fisticuffs with The Lizard (Rhys Ifans). The cast is credible (who doesn't love Emma Stone?), but the script is slow-going and filled with convenient coincidence. 136 minutes PG-13.