Joker superhero ticks boxes except one marked surprise

Dir: Marc Webb

With: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx

Runtime: 142 minutes

SHOULD anyone choose to accept the mission, there is probably a thesis to be written on the mental health of superheroes. Batman, for instance, is a study in manic depression, Iron Man a classic narcissist, Superman suffers from a Messiah complex, while The Hulk has a clear case of anger mismanagement. Spider-Man, in comparison, is the true joker in the pack, a happy-go-lucky sort never cheerier than when swooping from skyscraper to skyscraper in Manhattan.

Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, first seen in 2012, returns chirpier than ever in this enjoyable if tush-achingly long sequel. Perhaps clever old Spidey negotiated a cut of the $750 million the first film made at the box office. Either way, Garfield makes a winning superhero, accounting for a hefty chunk of the picture's charm.

Otherwise, save for one outstanding sequence when director Marc Webb breaks free of the constraints of the formula, it is the same old superhero businesses as usual, which will doubtless please fans while leaving everyone else wondering what the fuss is about. Any superhero or film with the word "amazing" in the title is asking to be judged by its ability to leave one's flabber well and truly gasted. On that score, and save for the section mentioned earlier, Webb's picture is fairly humdrum.

Webb opens his film with a quick recap of where we got to when the 2012 picture ended. Peter Parker, boy photographer for The Daily Bugle, is still in the dark as to what happened to his research scientist father. Webb fills in a little more of the back story before cutting to the present day to re-establish Spider-Man's credentials as a man of action untroubled by his Swiss cheese past. A dastardly Russian - what else - has hijacked a truck full of plutonium and is tearing through the streets of Manhattan blithely ignoring the rules of the road. Fortunately for the Big Apple, that good egg Spider-Man is on hand to take charge of the situation, finding the time to josh as he goes.

It is important for Webb to cram in as much jesting as he can early on, for the writers have something truly dastardly in mind for Spider-Man. Having been allowed to escape the glums visited on his fellow superheroes for so long, the man in the red suit is about to be given some cares of his own. Before the picture can supply those, it has to come up with the other essentials of a superhero movie. Spider-Man must be matched with a villainous foe, in this case an obvious and a not so obvious one.

The obvious one is Max Dillon, played by Jamie Foxx. Max is an electrical engineer and a nerd, with the universal accoutrements of the Hollywood nerd: glasses, a combover, ankle-showing trews a la Jerry Lewis, and British teeth. With those traits you would be forgiven for thinking he was going to play Halitosis Man or Mr Dull, but where would the fun be in that? Instead, courtesy of an accident at work involving a tank full of electric eels, Max is turned into Electro, a villain who uses his vast reserves of energy for evil ends. Any resemblance between Electro and British power companies is purely coincidental.

While Electro simmers away to not terribly thrilling effect, heir to billions Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), watches his father succumb to a mysterious illness. Harry does not want to go the same way and reckons that Spider-Man can help, but will he? Meanwhile, Spidey's alter ego Peter is experiencing relationship woes with Gwen (the ever likeable Emma Stone).

It is standing room only in the screenplay, which accounts for the excessive running time and the garbled feel of the story. This is a film that is out to tick all the boxes, whatever it costs. Chief among those boxes is the grand street fight, which no modern superhero movie dares to go without. You know the score: villains and hero slugging it out, ad tedium, in a public place, in the case of Spidey and Electro, Times Square.

More interesting are the personal demons Parker/Spider-Man has to battle. Ordinarily, this would place Spider-Man on the same level as every other superhero with an emotional beef. But Garfield, being an actor who can genuinely act, makes the character's emotional awakening worth watching. In one key scene in particular he shows why he was not only fit to fill the rubberised soles left behind by Tobey Maguire but is more than capable of taking the character much further.

Just when the emotions are hotting up nicely, however, it is time for more boxes to be ticked and the same old-same old business of setting up the next in the franchise. As long as it is Garfield swinging the blues, there is every reason to want to see more.