Much better than the reviews would have us believe

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2002)

I read the reviews, waited past the first two weekends, and sat down to what I expected would be ho-hum special effects and a so-so story. I was pleasantly surprised. The story was fairly faithful to the Marvel version, and I thought Maguire gave more dimension to his superhero than any of his cloaked and masked predecessors. Granted, he's onscreen about 95% of the time, but that didn't seem like overexposure in this case. Contrary to most reviews I read, Dafoe makes a great Green Goblin, troubled and insane and evil. He didn't steal the movie as Nicholson's Riddler did in Burton's 'Batman,' but I consider that a plus.
Maybe it's because so much studio hype has come out about the 'maybe' romance between Maguire and Dunst (and I consider it just 'hype'), but there seemed to be some onscreen chemistry there.
Special effects were much better than Roger Ebert would have you believe.