Fascinating but subliminally ambiguous

Rating: 9/10 (13 May 2007)

The problem with Spiderman is that he is a solitary super hero in perfect agreement with the animal he is embodying. But that limits his adventures a lot to dangling and swinging at the end of a spider thread. So he needs to be presented with some companions who are going to be his preys, if possible, if necessary. To make things even better an extra-terrestrial organism falls onto the earth with some meteor and this organism is going to invade that poor Spiderman and make him turn black, aggressive, vindictive, vain. He will then cause a lot of suffering by doing bad things for the pleasure of dominating people and things. He will also relive the death of his uncle in the most vengeful way and try to capture the supposed and convicted though not quite proved killer who has just escaped from his narrow prison cell. Then he will get into some riffraff with his supposed best friend who in his turn becomes vengeful about his father who was supposedly killed by Spiderman, though it was never proved. Add to that a little bit of technological magic to turn the escapee into a sandstorm and you have three fourth of the drama. The last fourth is a photographer who wants to become a star in the press and who cheats in order to do it with a fake Spiderman picture. He will be exposed. But that drama will not turn tragic because of some circumstances that will make the best friend realize he was dumb, that will make Spiderman free of his ET invader, that will even liberate the second host of the ET black invader. Bells will be the solutions, church bells of course, and a lot of luck too, and final forgiveness. Then the city will go back to its absolutely boring peacefulness. Yet the film is funny and packed with action, even if that action is slightly grandiloquent.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID