Alan Dee’s movie preview: Spidey swings back in hoping for webbed wonder

There are two important things to know about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – one is that it’s exactly what you would expect it to be, and the other is that it’s even more overblown than you might have feared.

The regrettable tendency for all superhero sequels is to just chuck in more, and more, and more of the same until the audience is battered into submission.

So as well as Andrew Garfield in the central role and Emma Stone as his love interest, there are a whole range of new foes led by Jamie Foxx, a complicated plot about corporate connivance and Russian gangsters and a running time that heads ominously towards the 2.5 hour benchmark that seems to be de rigueur these days.

Foxx probably didn’t have to ask too many questions about internal character motivation when he checked out that his Electro alter ego is a wage slave transformed into a fearsome monster after an unfortunate mishap involving a tank of genetically-modified electric eels. I hope the proper health and safety investigation was carried out...

Meanwhile there is an option for those who don’t have kids in tow – Pierce Brosnan is continuing to impress in his post-Bond career, and Emma Thompson is on a roll after Saving Mr Banks.

Put them both together as a separated couple teaming up to rescue their threatened pension, add in Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie and some lush Riviera locations and you’ve got The Love Punch, a bright and breezy jewel heist caper that stands or falls on the cast – who are more than capable of standing, thank you very much. Not a stunner, but a charmer.