The Amazing Spiderman...

So... we kind of eat a lot of cereal in this house. We both eat it five days a week for breakfast, and our bowls are on the large side. Justin, as in most things food-related, demands variety in his breakfast choices. As long as it packs a huge percentage of fiber (think Grape Nuts or Raisin Bran) and doesn't have high-fructose corn syrup listed as an ingredient, he's good to go. I can pretty much pick up whatever is on sale that fits those qualifications, and he's a happy camper. 

On the other hand, I am picky. I tend to be a cereal monogamist, if you will. I fall into long-term relationships with certain cereals that I eat every day, for years on end, before I move on to another. When I was in college, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds was my constant morning mealtime companion. For the first few years after graduation, I became passionately devoted to Crispix. And then sometime in the past couple years, while I've been dating Justin, I've been particularly enamored of Frosted Mini-Wheats Little Bites. I grew up eating Frosted Mini-Wheats, but I always felt that the wheat-to-frosting ratio was out of balance. With the Little Bites, the proportion of frosting to fibrous shredded wheat is higher, and creates an irresistible flavor combination.

My myopic obsession with Little Bites means that I'm constantly hoarding them whenever they go on sale. Though they retail for a lot more, I try to never spend more than $2.50 a box for them at most, preferably less whenever possible. As a result, if you open my cereal cabinet, it's usually stuffed with nothing but boxes of Little Bites from wall to wall.

This little anecdote is relevant today, because Kellogg's recently ran a promotion where they printed promo codes on the inside of boxes of Little Bites. If you saved up the codes and entered them on their website, you could redeem a certain number of codes for free tickets to see The Amazing Spiderman. I kind of don't want to admit how many promo codes I had to collect, but eventually I was able to save up enough for both Justin and I to see the movie. I was just short of the higher number necessary to get 3-D tickets, but I'm not considering that a huge loss -- 3-D movies give me a headache anyway. It wouldn't have been worthwhile to buy all that cereal just to get the free tickets, but because I was buying and eating it anyway, it was nice to be rewarded with free stuff.

So it was with free passes in hand that we arrived at the theater this morning to see the latest Spiderman offering. I wasn't really sure that another movie in the franchise was necessary, after the first three starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. I liked those movies quite a bit (though the third one was considerably less good, I'm not convinced that it required rebooting the entire series.) Still, I was a fan of the originals, and I was curious what Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone would bring to the table. Justin, of course, is always up for a superhero movie, and has a huge crush on Emma Stone, so he'd been looking forward to seeing The Amazing Spiderman all summer.

As a summer action film, The Amazing Spiderman certainly delivered. It had fantastic special effects (and yes, they probably would have been even more impressive in 3-D), and the plot was compelling. More importantly, I enjoyed Andrew Garfield's performance. Not only is he easy on the eyes, I enjoyed the snarkier, more sarcastic side that he brought out of the character. Garfield's version of Peter Parker was just a hint darker than Maguire's, and I didn't mind that at all. I think Stone's talents are better utilized in roles that showcase her comedic talents, such as her turn in Easy A, but I found her far less annoying than Kirsten Dunst, and that's always a good thing.

I still didn't leave the movie theater convinced that The Amazing Spiderman needed to be made, but it was definitely entertaining. I look forward to seeing the inevitable sequel, but the original Spiderman movies, directed by Sam Raimi, will always hold a place in my heart...