A light and airy approach to depicting a superhero. Fun!

Rating: 8/10 (3 May 2002)

SPIDER-MAN ***_ Action, Comedy, Romance / Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst
A perfectly ordinary (even geeky) high school student discovers he has special powers after he is bitten by a genetically altered spider. He uses these abilities to fight evil.
The first half of the film introduces and fleshes out the characters. I especially enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek style of humor as SPIDER-MAN teaches himself to use his new found abilities. He gets up to speed just in time to save New York City from a succession of two-bit hoods and one evil mastermind.
What separates SPIDER-MAN from most action/special-effects movies is this one has a well thought out script! Special-effects are used to illustrate the story rather than the story being written to showcase the latest special-effects. And there's plenty of humor to go around. I really enjoyed this light and airy approach to depicting a superhero. This will likely be the beginning of a long series.