"I believe there's a hero in all of us..."

Rating: 8/10 (28 July 2012)

Well I just need to know one thing - who thought it would be a good idea to have a seventy seven year old grandmother hanging from Doc Ock's tentacle as he clambered up a city skyscraper? Seriously, didn't anyone consider that she might have had a HEART ATTACK?!?! Come on, and then she hung from a ledge using a wooden cane? I'd like to know where in the realm of remote possibility this could happen. As the Marvel geek opined, 'Nuff said'.
Don't get me too wrong. I enjoyed the flick well enough, but these implausible things cross my mind when I watch a film, even if it's a comic book story. Say now, was Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) incredibly cool as a villain, or just incredibly lame? It could go both ways you know. I guess the Octopus connection works because he had his own four limbs and then the mechanical jobbers. On the plus side, the CGI necessary to pull off his character with all that wall climbing and demolition was pretty extraordinary. But cheesy too, I think he was kind of goofy as a Spidey villain.
Some other things bothered me too. Like the garbage man turning in the Spider-Man uniform he found in an alley and J.Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, hey, they both have the same first name) going front page with it. Couldn't that have been a replica uniform or a kid's Halloween costume? Why get all excited about that? But it did serve it's purpose for that great tongue in cheek 'He's Back' headline in the Daily Bugle with Spidey bursting through it for his comeback. That was pretty cool.
Not cool was using 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head' when Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) has one of his many moments of angst in the picture. That belongs solely in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". The comic books got by for a long time with the characterization of Peter/Spider-Man as a conflicted young teenager trying to find himself, but those days are pretty much over. Then again, I was just becoming a teenager when Stan Lee created Spidey, so maybe I'm too old to appreciate teenage angst anymore. If I'm wrong I apologize.
Hey, I did get a kick out of Peter asking Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) about his comic book collection. Mine is part of that same old story - Grandma threw all of mine away when I went away to college. There was a Justice League #1 and a Green Lantern #5 in there, maybe a little beat up but it came as a blow to the system. But after almost forty years I'm just about over it.
Anyway, I don't mean to be too harsh on the picture, just trying to have a little fun with my review. Glad to see Stan Lee show up again, this time saving someone from falling concrete when Doc Ock and Spidey have at it twenty stories above. When Spider-Man finally defeats his foe, I thought it somewhat humorous that he used a bit of that Sixties Star Trek logic to drive some sense into Octavius. You'd need to see Captain Kirk in action to understand that one.
So I guess the wedding's off, right?