Metacritic reviews

Webb's film is bold and bright and possesses charm in abundance. It swings into the future and carries the audience with it.

The plot gets itself tangled up in multiple villain strands, but in the main this installment is emotionally weightier and more satisfying than its predecessor.

Redundancy remains a problem, but this overlong superhero sequel gets by on sound, fury and star chemistry.

By the end of this film, they've done a very good job of setting up the next three or four films in the series, but at the expense of this film telling any sort of cohesive story.

Marc Webb, returning after the last instalment, again shows a better feel for the relationships than he does for juggling all the overlapping story elements.

Bright, punchy and earnest, Webb’s affable sequel is tough to dislike despite its tonal whiplash and clumsy script, which is redeemed by Garfield, Stone and DeHaan’s powerhouse trio.

A few too-broad gags aside — and even these are in the funky spirit of ’60s Marvel — this is a satisfying second issue with thrills, heartbreak, gasps, and a perfectly judged slingshot ending.

An overlong, at times almost plot-free soap opera that introduces a wealth of characters and dips into a wide variety of subplots but never comes together as a story.

Although it fundamentally has many of the same issues as the first film, the strengths are enhanced in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and it's certainly a step forward for the franchise. Now, let's give the web-head a villain worthy of his attention.

The film, like the original, feels very haphazardly structured, a hotchpotch collection of scenes rather than a unified whole. There's also no tonal consistency, with Webb lurching awkwardly from quippy comedy to brooding drama to high tragedy in short spaces of time, undercutting all three modes as a result.