Nice visuals, bad dialog, nice sound, mediocre acting

Rating: 5/10 (30 May 2010)

Tobey Maguire is very weak -- my daughter's cartoon drawings have more expression. Kirstin Dunst is really just barely OK but Tobey makes her look good. Some of the dialog between Tobey and Kirstin is literally painful to sit through. The movie is very pretty. The CGI crowd did their job, I just wish the writers had done half as well. My husband is really into sound and said it was good. (I thought so too, but one ear doesn't really work.) The movie started so slowly, we were wondering whether we should give up on it about 20 minutes in. We only give up on about one movie in twenty, so that tells you something. I'd heard good things about Spiderman and thought they applied to both 1 and 2, but I'm starting to suspect (and hope) that they were really about 2.