Caught like a fly in the web of hype

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2002)

Contains spoilers
Having waited what seems an eternity for Spider-Man to reach the big screen, Sam Raimi's adaptation of the Marvel comic book hero is a lot of fun. It also looks good, has an interesting cast, follows Stan Lee's original story with admirable faithfulness and has the obligatory summer blockbuster bells and whistles. So why have I left the cinema both the times I have seen it with a slight sense of anti-climax? Don't get me wrong, I liked the film but it failed to meet my sky-high expectations.
Raimi's Spider-Man is more like Richard Donner's Superman than Tim Burton's Batman, in its bright and breezy approach. However, the dilemmas of Peter Parker, played to a tee by Tobey Maguire, are captured well by Raimi. It takes the death of his uncle to realise that he can do more than make money out of his alter ego and the viewer sympathises with Parker's plight. Although `with great power comes great responsibility', he laments that the choices he makes always seem to hurt those he holds dearest. His ultimate duty to the spider inside means that he has to push away the girl he has always loved, Mary Jane Watson (ably carried off by Kirstin Dunst). In this sense Raimi successfully makes the viewer understand all aspects of being a superhero.
Although the story of Parker's ephiphany is told with care by Raimi, an avowed fan of the comics, the plot is traditional comic book adaptation fare: oddball loner discovers superpowers, suffers personal injustice, decides to fight crime, encounters maniacal bad guy, wins the day in grand finale. Perhaps I was expecting too much of Raimi's film - it is after all only based on a comic book. But I wanted a little more than I got. Nevertheless, the special effects are very good, in spite of my worst fears. I had been expecting dodgy, cartoonish CGI but, for the most part, Spider-Man convincingly spins his way through a pre-11 September Manhattan. The film's delayed production has meant that advances in digital technology have given the 'Human Spider' a fluency of movement that was impossible to pull off only 5 years ago. His web slinging and wall crawling are spot on throughout, with some excellent swooping camera work giving the impression of being right there with him. The overhead scenes where Parker is leaping from rooftop to rooftop are the only ones where the special effects look amateurish.
J.K Simmons steals the show in his brief role as the hilariously irascible Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson. Cliff Robertson and Rosemary Harris push the necessary buttons as Ben and May. Willem Dafoe as 'da foe' (boom boom) is larger than life for the film's duration. He is a well cast Norman Osborn/Green Goblin and is a worthy, menacing adversary for Spider-Man's first outing. And, with an ending that screams `sequel', you can be sure that the web-head will be back. It remains to be seen whether Spider-Man falls into the trap of other comic book franchises, such as Batman, which quickly headed south in terms of quality as the sequels racked up.

Sam Raimi has spun a good yarn and as an example of its genre it comes recommended. But it only really does what it says on the tin.