The charm of a boy in a superhero

Rating: 9/10 (19 April 2015)

It is not a miracle, but it is an epiphany. They even tried to make the supernatural transformation natural. The superhero is seen and shown as a plain ordinary man, I mean boy who is more or less bullied now and then, a weak one indeed who is trying to get in touch with the only man he knows had been working with his father before his parents disappeared after leaving him in the care of an uncle.
He manages to get where he wants to go and he manages to suffer the fatal accident, the accident that is going to kill the boy in him forever and make him become Spider-Man. That accident, fatal or not, is just plain banal and yet it is the transformation of a human into a spider. That's nice, delicately done, empathetic, attractive. That boy becomes adorable after that transformation in which he recuperates what his father had been researching about.
Unluckily he gives away a formula he should never have given away and that is nearly the end of the world, and this time no epiphany, just a plain apocalypse. And there that's what you are looking for, so don't expect me to tell you what that formula will produce.
On the other side of the natural-supernatural divide there is the love affair of this Peter Parker, that new wave Peter Pan of a Protector Plus in propria persona who comes into the picture Per Procurationem. He is adorable indeed and the poor girlfriend he conquers is no fool. She knows the difference between a real lover and an impotent rapist and you can imagine when her father, a cop mind you, intervene in this sexy love affair that was perfectly safe and back covered to put an end to it.
The end is thus nicely sad since the poor spider will live alone, like all spiders, and his mate will have to go her own way where all kinds of janitors are making sure there are no spiders nor cobwebs in the corners of our minds.
The special effects are funny and disquieting at times but the film has a certain beauty in its brutality.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU