Hanging With The Big Boys

Rating: 7/10 (19 August 2004)

From the web-woven opening credits to the last strains of the cartoon theme as the copyrights roll, Spiderman joins the pantheon of underpanted heroes whom the movie forum has portrayed as mightily as their bulging quadriceps (at this movie's release date, that being only Superman and Batman - the OG's).
Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, James Franco and Kirsten Dunst's Breasts.
Spiderman's new movie franchise ambassador had to win over audiences in his first 5 minutes screen time, or go the way of Leno-chinned Nicholas Hammond, the vacuous, Gilligan-hairdo nerd of the late-70s TV series, The Amazing Spiderman, which was as exciting as swallowing chalk. Tobey Maguire, running after his bus, browbeaten by schoolmates, lamenting in voice-over his teen-age problems, was a winner right outa the gate!
An exhilarating feature of this film was the web-swinging (non-existent in the soporific Amazing Spiderman TV series, due to its technical difficulty). Movie technology has lent literal wings to stunts and visuals which were impossible in the days of Adam West running around with a Wile E. Coyote bomb over his head, or Reb Brown decimating the legend of Captain America throughout that whole ineffectual DOINK of a movie. Truly this is the correct era to begin making films of 'super' heroes, for only now can movie-makers convey a 'superiority' that George Reeves could never achieve by lying on a table and being chroma-keyed onto a swishing sky-scape.
Aficionados may lament that there *is* a CGI jerkiness to the man-spider's swinging - but this nonhuman factor somehow only enhances the arachnoid element in this 'spider'-man. It's a letdown, yes, knowing that Tobey is not even on screen when Spiderman is barreling along, but it's better than watching 'crooks' with pencil-mustaches shooting at George Reeves with their hats on, while he poses arms-akimbo-legs-apart, then crushes their guns like the movie-clay models they are ('one-trick-pony' in the dictionary, there's a picture of George Reeves as Superman).
In the 60's comics, Parker was bitten by a 'radioactive' spider  this was updated to 'genetically-mutated' spider, reflecting each era's fears and misunderstandings. The decision to have Spiderman internally generate his webbing seems more rational now, than his creation of web-cartridges in the 60's. It always intrigued me why Stan Lee (Spiderman's creator) balked at the webbing aspect, giving his young hero super-strength, an inexplicable 'spider-sense' and even the power to walk up walls (which should not be possible; stickiness of appendages is irrelevant, but rather volume-to-surface-area ratio allows insects this ability), yet no endemic webbing  a spider's trademark. (Spiders 'spin' their web via spinnerets located anally, so did Lee consider this and veto it?  and I suppose any superhero generating web from a butt-spinneret would lose most of the popcorn vote.)
Who better to play Spiderman's greatest arch-nemesis, the Green Goblin, than Willem Dafoe? Face carved from crazy and body ripped like Jesus in crucifixion pose, Willem OWNED this role. The kiddies might have relished Norman the Goblin in his techno armor suit (a deviation from the comics, though definitely an improvement on the purple and green sexually-indecisive Halloween attire), but my favorite scenes were Willem battling the Goblin Within; when he was simply - like John Malkovich  Being Willem Dafoe.
James Franco, as Dafoe's barely-tangible son and Peter Parker's almost-incorporeal pal, Harry Osborn, phoned in his role on a cellphone that kept cutting out. In the comic world, Harry wildly grabs the party reins when his father dies at Spiderman's hands, and becomes the second Green Goblin. By movie's end, Franco - in a valiant attempt to become three-dimensional - vows to make Spiderman pay for killing his dad, but I don't think any of us can visualize the fey Franco carrying the torch of Divine Wicked that came so rapturously naturally to Willem. Probably the biggest crime this wisp of smoke could perpetrate would be to join a boy-band and pretend to be The Hard One.
Can anyone deny the integral role played by Kirsten Dunst's Breasts?; ubiquitous, delinquitous, nasty-perky, herky-jerky, firm yet forgiving, relentlessly real, cruel but fair. Remember, dears: when walking home from work, *always take the darkest alleyways and wear no bra*. Flame-red locks, sotto voce delivery, camera unable to focus on anything BUT those mounds of necessity, those pillows of slavery. Spiderperve has the advantage that most of us who wear dark glasses indoors gainfully employ: behind that mask, we KNOW what he's looking' at! After impressing her by kicking white-rapper butt, he hangs upside-down passively, allowing her to ease his mask off his mouth, in the same manner she would ease dark-nylon stocking from betwixt milky thigh, rain streaming down his roundish head, delineating her pinkish curves, as they lock lips in a tongue-roving, erotogenic, nerve-jangling, storm-driven kiss, rivaling easily the heat of Scarlett & Rhett in Gone With The Wind, or Rourke & Basinger in Nine ½ Weeks, and even Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine in Deathtrap. The subliminal metaphor was not lost on this disciple of heady foreplay: Fear, Sweat, Violence, Surrender. And all of it  WET. The Human Procreation Arc.
Like the movie's slipshod ending, I have to wrap this essay suddenly (I've reached my word-limit, as Raimi probably reached his budget-limit). Kirsten Dunst's Breasts suddenly profess an irrationally-deduced 'love' for Parker, which is an essay unto itself, outlining the needless 'hope' this would instill in geeks who bag their comics who are NOT secretly superheroes: perpetuating the fantasy that a Pasty-Boy can Make Good if his Love is Real  well, boys, you'd better pray that somewhere out there, there's a radioactive ferret with your butt-cheeks' name on his teeth.
(Read this review unabridged at: www.poffysmoviemania.com/Spiderman.html)