One more churned out by the popcorn mill

Rating: 3/10 (27 May 2002)

Rarely do I feel as misanthropic as I do when I get home from a movie as bad as this one, and as popular as this one. Sure, it will fade by morning, but until then my dreams will be haunted be the ludicrous villainy, predictable action and motherhood-and-apple-pie cheese of Spider-Man. While Tobey MacGuire was an excellent choice, the whole movie was just lurching through the motions; there were no surprises, the whole thing felt paper-thin. Many cliches were strung together to lengthen the otherwise trivially simple plot - geek getting his own back against high-school bully, agonizing death scenes, and much puppy-dog romance which everyone else seems to have found adorable. I found it simply tedious.
While the movie had some nice effects, it is, as one might expect, just another entry in a sad list of superhero flicks that are more or less indistinguishable from one another. Let me give you a hint: the good guy wins.