Entertaining flick that hits and misses

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2002)

Overall, this was an above-average effort at transforming Spider-Man the comic superhero into his movie counterpart. Given all the hype of the film though, I was a touch disappointed with this first part of a probable 3 episode series. It was entertaining stuff but at times the film seemed to fall between a romance/drama flick (emphasised by the nature of the ending) and a superhero action flick. Throughout Peter Parker was portrayed way too nerdy and besotted with the girl. Another actor -less geeky would have been a better choice than Tobey Maguire. There were too many sentimental scenes for this genre of movie- Spiderman's famous sense of humour was completely discarded-hopefully this side of his character will be developed in the sequel. I'd prefer this any day to the "blubbing" Parker that was seen here. The character played by Kirsten Dunst was iffy- portrayed as a materialistic, boyfriend-changing, Broadway wannabe who by the end is deeply "in love" with the nerdy Parker. This didn't really work and seemed contrived. The pacing was erratic at times - a measured build-up to develop the characters and introduce Spiderman...good, but then within seconds of film-time he's "well known" by everybody in New York City (this worked well in Ghostbusters '84 -but not here!) Also the Green Goblin character was a bit of a mystery-and what was with the ridiculous mask?! The best moments were when Spidey was in action- kicking ass,swinging through the avenues of Manhattan, posturing athletically- basically being a superhero. The special effects were good and Spiderman's acrobatics-enthralling, along with a mix of some really humourous moments and some great action scenes. The best characters in the movie were the ones who "had character" -Parker's uncle, Willem Dafoe's Dr Osborne and the newspaper editor Jamison. Look forward to Spiderman II. Overall rating 7/10.