Are you kidding?

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2002)

This movie was quite a disappointment. I obviously wasn't expecting Shakespeare, but this movie was just corny and cartoonish. The performance of Willem Dafoe was over-the-top overdramatic and laughable. Many people in the packed theater that I saw the movie in with laughed at many of his supposed intense scenes. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were just boring, flat, and lifeless. I suppose I was expecting a "cooler" movie, in the vain of Batman. Then again, Tim Burton directed that movie, and this one had Sam Raimi at the helm. Obviously, these are two very different directors, but even so, I wasn't expecting the heavy-handed cheesiness that Spider-Man delivered. Sam Raimi is quite overrated in my opinion, directing such terrible movies as, The Gift, For Love of the Game, and The Quick and the Dead. He was definitely no better here. I have no problem with Spider-Man raking in the record-breaking bucks that it has so far and will seemingly continue to for a while (and I have NO problem with ANY movie breaking the all time record of Titanic), but that does not make this a good, or even entertaining, movie. Overall, just a lot of talented actors in a bad blockbuster. (Not the first time).