Another Great Marvel Comic Movie.

Rating: 9/10 (30 June 2002)

I meant to review this months ago when I had (by great luck) managed to attend the premiere in Los Angeles. Regardless, with a "better late than never" attitude, this has turned out to be one of Summer 2002's bright spots in an incredibly busy movie season.
As it stands, "Spider-Man" has all the right elements: A real comic book "feel" to it, an excellent Danny Elfman score, Tobey Maguire as a totally believable Peter Parker (with just the right amounts of shyness and the "old Parker luck"), an appropriately sinister Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin, and a scene-stealing performance by J. K. Simmons as the cigar-chomping J. Jonah Jameson. That's a character that should have been used more in the movie, as he was a lot of fun to see in action. Here's hoping for more screen time in the next one.
There wasn't a lot that I didn't like about this movie. I still didn't like the Green Goblin costume as much as I tried to, the organic web-shooters didn't bother me half as much as I had figured (perhaps as they weren't overplayed as being so), and while Kirsten Dunst didn't do a bad job as Mary Jane, she just never really captured the "look" of what I though the character should be.
As for the "goods" of the film, the battles were perfectly set up as comic-cook style brawls, with plenty of exaggerated movements and situations. When Spider-Man web-swung through the streets of New York (love the costume), I couldn't help but get a chilled sense of awe that I originally felt after seeing the first trailer last year. And the character relationships were great. "Spider-Man" the comic has always been as much about the man behind the mask as it is about the hero. I'm so relieved that Sam Raimi took noticeable attempts to balance the two.
Despite its comic-book origins, the last battle is pretty intense, comparably so to the Tim Burton "Batman" films. And the Green Goblin's scare tactics even made myself jump a few times. So parents with very little ones may want to check out the film first to see if the kids can handle it. But in that regard, I'm glad Raimi took the film seriously enough to not let it delve into the lame campiness that was "Batman & Robin". And I'm really glad that they didn't take too many liberties with the Spider-Man origin to remove the emotional impact that it carried throughout the film.
As a movie, it retained all of the wonder, excitement and fun that has endeared me to Spider-Man since I was a kid. As a super-hero film, I can compare it to the orignal "Batman" and "Superman" films in its high-quality treatment. I will wait impatiently for the feature-packed (I hope) DVD, and will have faith that the next installment of the series will be as rewarding as this one was. A must see. A fun movie.