Needs to be cut by about 1 hr., 45 mins.

Rating: 1/10 (12 July 2002)

If this latest in a string of recent awful super heroe movies [after 'Batman and Robin'] were a short subject film instead of a full-length feature, it really might've been something. The last 15 minutes finally get it together for what passes as a movie experience. Until then, however, this film is pretty much a letdown, padding its material in a blur of camerawork apparently intended to hide how thin it is. In one of his less-than-stellar performances, Tobey McGuire portrays the geeky Peter Parker, who develops super human powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Kirsten Dunst and Wilem Defoe were more convincing in their roles as Parker's/Spiderman's love interest and arch-memesis respectively. Sam Raimi directed this unbelievably slow and drawn-out film in which scenes begin and end with nothing having been communicated. This is just too bad, because it's not the actors' fault. Laughably predictable and cliched, there are no mysteries about Spiderman, other than the one of how a film this bad can end up costing so much money to make.