Am I the only one?

Rating: 1/10 (2 August 2002)

Who find this to be the most painful moviegoing experience in recent memory? I don't think I found one redeeming piece of filmmaking in this overproduced piece of garbage and it was just torturous to watch. Do I have to be a Spider-man fan to get what all the buzz is about? I doubt it because I had only seen the hackney, corny 60s Batman before the movie came out and that was a great piece of work.
Comnparisons to Batman aside this movie cannot stand alone on its own two feet. This film is two-hours of anti-climax without an interesting or even developed character in the lot of them. While Tobey McGuire is a decent actor he's always had a boring screen persona, in fact, I couldn't find a vibrant personality in this film to liven it up.
David Koepp, who has written or co-written some exciting films such as Jurassic Park and Panic Room couldn't have come up with a more boring and I'm guessing faithful storyline. There wasn't anything to punch it up or make it more lively. Of course, a slow paced story can be made more interesting and Sam Raimi is also largely to blame even though he's made some great movies in the past this most certainly is not one of them.
Even if the story was designed with cliches in the comic book couldn't they have been avoided? I won't even go into them but they're all over the place. Willem DeFoe is also boring and the fights are lame and contrived and there wasn't an original or even a clever move in any of them. It goes without saying the special effects were awful and they go hand in hand with the trite motionless storyline. I don't think I've seen a worse studio film in six years. I didn't have to stand in line to see this one and I sure as hell won't be standing in line to see the next one.