What superhero movies would be like if left in the hands of the writers from the Oxygen network

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2004)

Despite the cynical title, allow me to preface this review by stating that I liked this film. I really, truly, genuinely did. In fact, I'll even take it one step further; this may be the VERY BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE _EVER_MADE...and that's coming from a fan, (though not a fanatic) of the genre.
Why the ambivalence then? Because this movie is not perfect. In truth, it's far from perfect; it plays more like a rough draft or first cut of something that could be much better.
What Spiderman 2 does do so successfully is introduce many new elements heretofore unseen in action movies: character, plot, drama, and real conflict. The director and writer are not content making Spidey and the people in his world one-dimensional comic-book cutouts (pardon the pun); instead, these are real characters, with real dilemmas, real feeling, and real conflicting sense of responsibility and desire. In other words, they are far more human. And successfully allowing viewers to be sucked in to another world, in which we can vicariously live through and observe others' conflicts and be riveted by what we see, is the hallmark of great film.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that the movie does far too much of this. Sure, there are awesome special effects, great battle scenes, and wonderful vistas of real and computer-assisted, imagined New York (and Chicago standing in for New York; note train scene) but there is also almost as much melodrama and as many soap opera-ish momements in Spidey's world as you'd find in Susan Lucci. I got excited when I think I finally found one scene in which the major players' eyes did NOT well up with tears; they probably used more nitro-glycerine in this movie (or whatever chemical it is that they put into actors' eyes to create fake tears) than the number of doughnuts Albert Molina ate on set (and when you see how fat and blubbery this dude is in his sexy, revealing Dr. Octopus outfit, you'll know that that number ain't too small.) After a while, even the most seasoned Danielle Steel readers dragged into the audience by their violence-loving kids/husbands will start longing for another epic cartoon battle scene, rather than having to watch any more of James Franco's teary eye infection blown up on the huge screen scene after scene.
But I admired the film. I really did. I think it will serve as a trendsetter for future action films. Hell, it may even be studied as an example of how one CAN make a film that incorporates wonderful fantasy violence, characters with super-human powers, bizarre villains etc. without insulting the intelligence of the audience and boring them to tears whenever the CGI doesn't have them gawking at the screen (are you listening, George Lucas?)
The acting is uniformly good; Tobey Maguire, an actor I was never particularly impressed with (in no small part because we're about the same age, both actors, and while he's a mega-superstar, I'm sitting here writing reviews on IMDb at 12:44 AM), did a surprisingly excellent job. Kirsten Dunst is not just another pretty face, and whoever played Aunt May is clearly a seasoned actress. The only one I wasn't particularly thrilled with was Alfred Molina. I'm not certain if that's because he simply couldn't quite convey the same kind of electrifying excitement that other superhero villains have in recent years (Jack Nicholson, Willem Defoe, Gene Hackman) or because everytime he appeared on screen, I kept expecting him to rip off the tentacles, revealing a black caftan and a fuzzy hat, and break out into an impassioned, foot-stomping rendition of "Tradition". Kind of unsuspended my suspended disbelief. I've never understood why producers/directors of highly-anticipated, much-heralded, big-budget films choose not to sign the very *best* actors to play key roles. You know that Jeremy Irons, Alan Rickman, Patrick Stewart, and a host of other great middle-aged actors with funny accents would have been thrilled to play this role...why did they settle on the less-known, and far more droll Molina? Same goes for Hayden Christensen, but that comment is in that film's review.
Speaking of disbelief, as I mentioned above, the writing is quite tight, and I loved the fact that they actually spent SOME of the $200 million dollar budget on writers who had taken courses in dramatic writing a tad more advanced than 7th Grade Haikus (are you listening George LUCAS?!) Nevertheless, there were a couple of scenes (cf. the doctor's conversation with Parker, and Aunt May's "Henry Jackson" speech) that seemed to come completely out of left field. They were clearly intended to push the plot/"with great powers come great responsibility" motif, but they were so contrived, and so out-of-flow with the rest of the seamless dialogue that those two scenes managed to unsuspend my suspension of disbelief. Those two scenes contained the only moments I'd reckon were entirely unbelievable in the film, and to be able to say that about a movie in which people fall from buildings without so much as a scratch, and a jumpy trapeeze dude in a Spider suit sets on a mission to stop a criminal with electric octopus hands from harnessing the sun's energy to destroy the world...well, that should tell you something about the overall terrible quality of the writing in those two scenes.
All in all, a flawed film, about flawed human beings. But it's a trailblazer and a trendsetter nonetheless. Highly enjoyable, and I highly recommend it.