Masterfully Woven

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2004)

Sam Raimi does a more than capable job bringing the webbed super hero Spiderman to the screen in this big budget film. Spiderman has it all: great action scenes, decent plot, good, solid acting, a sense of humour, and heart. Young Peter Parker is bitten by a spider...oh, hey, you know the rest. Tobey MacGuire does a very good job bringing Parker's character some dimension as does Kirsten Dunst. Those two have some apparent chemistry. William Dafoe is as always very good as the villain. His Green Goblin is quite menacing. Oscar winner Cliff Roberston gets the oft-repeated tagline that" with great power comes great responsibility." Seems hokey, but it worked for me. J.K. Simmons and Rosemary Harris excel as what you think Jonah Jameson and Aunt May should be. Raimi really works his magic with the special effects. He uses just enough live action in the film to not make the film look like nothing more than a CGI film(see the abyss-mal Hulk if you are not sure what I am talking about). The scenes with Spidey flying through the streets throwing one web over another was just mesmerizing to me. Most of all in the film I liked the message it gave. Good can defeat evil. Spidey, Peter Parker, is a young hero with scruples and morals. You rarely see the likes of him on screen today.