Good stuff

Rating: 9/10 (30 November 2010)

Spider-Man is a very good film. It is also a very good super-hero origin film. It also has the distinction of being quite a good super-hero film (origin films are often so tied up with telling the origin story that they forget to give the audience a fair helping of what they went to the movie for - the super-hero of the hour actually doing his super-heroic thing).
A well-cast Tobey Maguire goes through sufficient dollops of (rather mature) teenage angst before suffering the bite of a radioactive spider, contributing to his much-loved uncle's murder through inaction, designing and making an extremely snazzy costume, falling foul of his best friend's loopy millionaire Dad, and finally making headway with the girl of his dreams (headway, in this case, being an extremely wet upside down kiss).
And the audience is favoured with some decent Spidery goings-on, with a particularly effective climax on some bridge in new York (probably the Brooklyn Bridge, but don't quote me - I'm from the Isle of Wight).
The performances are all good: as noted, Maguire is a little old for high school age peter parker. And the other slightly wrong note is the absence of wisecracking from Spidey in costume. Otherwise all is very well (with Rosemary Harris and JK Simmons spot on, visually and performance-wise, as Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson).
The CGI is a little wobbly early on, but is mostly very near to what the comic suggests Spider-Man's movements must be.
And the emotional journeys of the characters all work well in this satisfying movie.