The Amazing Spiderman 2

Reboots. They happen all the time now. Why this year there will be yet another reboot of Spiderpants, er man. Because this second outing for Andrew Garfield as the webby one didn't really do so well with critics or audiences. 

Garfield was a rebooted Spidey himself. After diminishing returns from Toby ‘I Hunch’ Maguire in three movies, Spiderplant came back as Garfield. Not an orange cat, you idiot, Andrew Garfield. I thought I’d already made this clear? Pay attention will you?

Or don’t. Not to the movie anyhow. There’s too much crammed into the film and with little genuine plotting to make it work. Electro Boy looks really different from his time with The Mighty Boosh. The Green Goblin is arch and camp and a terrible disappointment. Gwen Stacey is Emma Stone, the new darling of tap-dance, sing-song Hollywood musical revivals. Her eyes are big. Her impact on the movie small, despite some decent lines and a bit of the action.

Nobody impacts on the movie, they’ve got nothing to work with. Swing and prevent crime, Spidey. Just like the cartoons. Only with fewer dimensions to your character. Be a ghostly presence haunting Peter Parker, Dennis Leary. Like you spirited away Bill Hicks’ material all those years ago and pretended it was your own. Look translucent and sparky blue, Jamie Foxx, and try to forget you're an Academy Award winner slumming it here. 

Superheroes are bad for those they care about. We knew this. It’s peppered through every 21st century Marvel movie to provide moral fibre for the otherwise diarrhetic orgy of making the most of having amazing powers. You hear that, Amazing Spiderman? Stop having girlfriends or they and/or those close to them will die. Not so heroic now, are you, you creepy insect boy?

Bet the rebooted rebooted still peddles this cliche, though, don't you?

Rango

Jamie Foxx is a freed slave who takes bloody, shooty revenge in this shooty, bloody Tarantino remake of…hang on a darn tootin’, that’s Rango Unchained. Rango is an animated feature about a fantasist pet chameleon who ends up adrift in the desert. Except not adrift because adrift is a water-related word and there is an absence of water: the town of Dirt, where he swiftly becomes sheriff, is dry as a bone and everyone’s gonna die. Muahahahahahaha!

Nobody says “Muahahahahahaha!” by the way, that’s mine. I copyrighted it years ago when I was planning on taking over the world but then my meds started to work and I gave up on the idea. Stupid world anyway, full of people who like paper and coins.

Back to the reviewing.

There’s a girl lizard for Rango to fall in love with. There’s a dodgy mayor. There are all manner of excellently observed and parodied tropes of the Hollywood Western, there’s even a possible reference to Four Weddings and a Funeral when the mayor calls for the 

‘holy spigot’ to be brought forth so that a water valve can be turned on. Only when it is turned on it wants to have sex with everyone. Not that kind of turned on. When it is turned on nothing emerges but mud. Because no water, aren’t you paying attention?

It’s all that nasty mayor’s fault but just as Rango and the townsfolk begin to see what’s going on Rango is exposed by a nasty rattle snake called Jake to make his name rhyme. Sort of. It would only completely rhyme if he was called something like Rattlesnake Battle Jake but let’s not get picky here. It is a good villainous name and he’s all coils and aggression so you just know his mummy didn’t love him. Why else would he still be so attached to that rattle from when he was a baby? I made that bit up, incidentally. It’s just a normal rattlesnake’s rattle tail. Except it isn’t, it’s a machine gun. Damn he’s bad.

Anyway, Rango is exposed – metaphorically, nobody sees his chameleon sex places – and wanders out into the desert to be sad and rubbish. There he meets The Spirit of the West. Last time I looked Spirit of the West was a Canadian folk band with some splendid songs about politics and drinking. True dat. But this Spirit of the West is a Clint Eastwood lookalike who tells Rango that it doesn’t matter that he’s bullshitted the townsfolk in the past about his brave deeds because, well he doesn’t exactly say because why, he just sort of says that and leaves the rest up to Rango. Mostly. I might have been eating crisps and missed a bit of dialogue.

So Rango goes back to Dirt and a bloodbath ensues. Blood literally spurts and spurts and spurt and Leonardo DiCaprio dies and…wait, that’s Rango Unchained again. Sorry.

Rango goes back to Dirt, sorts out the mayor, manages to turn Rattlesnake Cattle Jake on the mayor, eats the mayor, poos the mayor out again, chases the mayor’s excremental form out of town. Or something nothing like that but definitely involving defeating the mayor. He’s a rootin’ tootin’ hero and the girl kisses him.

I like the fillum. It’s a vehicle for some silly voices from Depp at the beginning but fleshes out much more as it progresses. It’s Flushed Away in the desert. It’s got several fingers missing yet still manages to play the guitar amazingly well. No wait, that’s Django Reinhardt. As you were, pardner.