This movie, like most bad movies, is about a half hour too long!! (if you saw the movie you'd get that joke) Spoilers!!!

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2002)

I saw SPIDER-MAN opening night with a capacity crowd. I'm not sure how much they liked it, but I was really bored with it. When I first saw the infamous teaser trailer for this movie I must say I was intrigued. I've been a fan of Spider-Man since I was a kid, therefore I was keeping my fingers crossed about the whole affair. For the most part Marvel comics hasn't really had a very impressive run with their movie properties. Most of that was due to the lack of F/X technology available in the past. So after seeing the more recent trailers, I was getting more and more reved up to see this thing. So on Friday I bought my ticket early and waited to see what I hoped would be a "high flying, rip-roaring time" at the movies. Instead I was treated to Peter Parker The Movie. For a summer action movie, this movie is light on the action. Normally Sam Raimi is able to keep things rolling when it comes to action pieces. Granted he didn't write the script, but he also didn't direct it with his usual kinetic energy. *Spoilers* The movie opens with a really cool Animated Marvel Comics logo, but it's all downhill from there. In case you don't already know. Peter Parker is a high-school science geek who, on a school field trip, is bitten by a genetically mutated "super spider". This scene is one of the most annoying in the whole movie. I'm not a purist and don't mind the fact that the means of mutating the spider were changed. But man what's with that scientist rambling on about the various spiders to the high school class? "This spider's reflexes border on precognition, you could almost say it has a "spider sense". Yipee, That was a laugh riot my friend! It was like one of those really bad 1950's horror movies. Where the doctor explains everything in a dumbed down fashion to other doctors who probably want to slap him for talking down to them. The scenes that follow are probably the best of the whole movie though. (Flash Thompson's slow-mo punch was pretty darn funny.) When Peter discovers his super powers, he begins to experiment and have fun. Even if he was a little less worried then I would be in such an instance. It was fun. And just like the original comic book handled it in a nice way. Giving Peter moral challenges, some of which he fails. As any young kid given super powers would. But these scenes make up the bulk of the action sequences. After this there are maybe fifteen minutes of Spider-Man. If you've seen the commercials you've seen it all, LITERALLY. Most of this takes place in hokey montages of action, like in Superman. The rest was a talkie snore fest, the only time it got interesting was when J. Jonah Jameson was on screen, or Willem Dafoe was kickin it Jekyll and Hyde style. Otherwise some of the monologues were just hard to listen to. And Tobey's voice coming from the costume was bad. I know if I were a scrawny kid who had the duality of being a superhero I'd come up with th ebest darn superhero voice I could. I wouldn't go around doing my best imitation of the pimple faced teen from the Simpsons.