Entertaining but far from perfect

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2002)

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man spins a good-looking web that holds the audience in place for the film's two-hour duration, but what I missed was the bite from the ol' arachnid that you'll be feeling for a few days after the experience. The movie was certainly entertaining, but somewhat lacking in atmosphere.
I have few complaints about the first half of the movie, as Peter Parker's transformation was portrayed quite well with a light humorous touch. Laughs all around the theatre. However, it was quite obvious that Raimi and the writers had a tough task in trying to cram a lot of content into a limited time, so despite the warm depiction of Peter Parker's relationship to his aunt & uncle, it was all a bit shallow. Just barely enough to justify why Peter comes to use his powers for good rather than bad.
After the amusing and entertaining part where PP comes to terms with his new self, the movie unfortunately becomes quite ordinary. None of the action scenes are particularly inspiring - I personally liked the action in Blade II a lot better, for example - and the plot twists are very predictable. Not that a movie like this is expected to have surprising plot twists, but anyway. And then there's the Green Goblin, who seems to divide opinions on this board. I didn't see anything groundbreaking in Willem Dafoe's portrayal of Osborn/Goblin, in fact the twin-personae scenes where he is talking to his other self through the mirror were quite childish. And as a super-villain, the Green Goblin just doesn't cut it. Not dark enough, silly gadgets, shallow motivation, no great masterplan (in fact he was no more evil than your average Enron board member) and a costume that ranks right down there with Arnold Schwarzenegger's in the second Batman sequel.
On the whole, Spider-Man is an entertaining movie and a decent-enough comic book adaptation, but I was hoping for something a bit darker and atmospheric. Three stars out of five, or a 6 on the imdb scale.