Flabbergasting...

Rating: 9/10 (11 May 2002)

This is a very cute movie, built around a love story and a teenager stepping into adulthood and discovering his own body - slightly superhuman body, that is. I think Sam Raimi (and the script writer David Koepp, who previously did a great job on Stir of Echoes) is faithful to the spirit of the Spiderman comics by focusing deliberately on the human side of the story, which is well served by a good cast - Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco - the weakest being probably Willem Dafoe, who looks so much a like a goblin anyway that he didn't have to put much effort into his part. This portrait of the superhero as a young man blends skillfully his apprenticeship as a human spider with his more common teenager concerns and love interest. The result might not be as spectacular as X-Men; on the other hand it's not trying to, but instead depicts a very human and attaching Spiderman.