Over-rated

Rating: 5/10 (4 November 2002)

Being hearing impaired, I ahd to pick up the DVD version of Spider-Man (2002) in order to get my first viewing of the film. I was a comic-book geek in the early 1990's, I was a film-fan that followed the legal battles to get "Spider-Man" made on the big screen. I lobbied for people to give Tobey Maguire a chance as Peter Parker because I was a fan of his and I thought he deserved a shot at showing Peter Parker in his full splendor....
That being said, this film pained me to watch it.
When watching comic book adaptations, one lists Superman, Batman and X-Men as some of the quality cinematic versions of the Comic genre... Superman put the Man-of-steel into reality, Batman took us the comic book with it's overall production, and X-men mocked itself in order to give a realistic twist to the fantasy. Spider-man does a good job of staying true to some origins and has scenes that are very campy and make you feel like it's a cinematic version of a Comic Book. There are too man flaws in the film however -- the painful-to-watch Kristen Dunst as Mary Jane Watson and her carpet-bagging with boys (oh yes, she is beautiful, yes she is talented - but her smile looked painful and part of her performance I enjoyed most was the rain-soaked scene), Tobey as Peter Parker/Spiderman who I couldn't quite get behind and couldn't quite believe as the nebish and socially inept Parker, and the a-bit-too-CGI Spider-man shots (that were a necessity).
With all this negativity, I need to give a nod to James Franco and Willem Dafoe for their portrayals of Harry and Norman Osborne (respectively). Those were characters I got behind.... The antagonist (Dafoe) and his not-quite-good-enough son (Franco). It's very disenchanting when you can get behind the villian before the hero.
Suffice it to say, I am very dissappointed in "Spider-Man" as a motion picture. After nearly 20 years of studios feuding to get the right to make this movie, you would think that they would have done a better job with the script, with the characters and with the direction of the film.