Cracking Comic-Book Adventure With Your Friendly Neighbourhood Web-Slinger

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2005)

Peter Parker is a high-school kid about to graduate when he is bitten by a genetically-enhanced super-spider. He develops extraordinary powers; great strength, heightened awareness, lightning reflexes and spiderlike abilities to climb and spin webs. At a crossroads in his life, he resolves to become Spiderman, a crime-fighting superhero ...
This is a great action blockbuster version of one of the most famous and beloved comic-books of all time - Stan Lee's Spiderman. It had been done before in the seventies as an animated TV show and a pretty good TV-movie, but this is the treatment it really deserves - a big-budget extravaganza with a first-rate cast, terrific sets and special effects and a brilliant visual stylist at the helm. David Koepp's script wisely invests lots of time in the characters - despite the title, this is really a movie about who Peter Parker is, what happens to him, and why he does what he does. Maguire gives an assured but atypical superhero performance, quiet and affable and completely lacking in pretension. Dunst is a great all-American girl, Dafoe is terrific as the schizophrenic villain, alternating between ambitious-but-cowardly scientist Norman Osborn and his depraved alterego, the Green Goblin, and don't miss a funny cameo by Raimi's old pal Campbell as a wrestling emcee. The one duff note is Franco, whose performance is okay but has too much screen-time and whose role seems a bit unnecessary. There are some terrific gags and set-pieces, like the spider-sense sequence in the school and the big parade the Green Goblin attacks, all accompanied by a great Danny Elfman score. This movie was a richly-deserved success both critically and commercially, for one of American's most original and talented directors, but whilst it is very good I'm afraid I have to say that not only is it not Raimi's best movie, it's not even his best comic-book movie (for that, check out Darkman, which is much wilder visually). It's hard to find any fault in such a fabulous fun flick though, which entertains throughout with laughs, scares, romance and thrills.