Peter Parker is your typical high school kid who is just trying
to survive the school day. He's got a major crush on a cute classmate named Mary
Jane Watson, yet he doesn't have the nerve to talk to her. Peter's good friends
with Harry Osborn, a privileged kid whom has a major chip on his shoulder:
namely his father, Norman Osborn the scientific genius, and founder of the mighty
Oscorp corporation. And yet even Norman is not without his own problems. Oscorp
is busy working on a new serum that is a performance enhancer for the US military.
It is supposed to increase the strength and agility of a man-but testing of the
serum has revealed that it can also turn whoever takes it into a raging psychopath.
With the military ready to pull the plug, Norman, in desperation, takes the
serum himself in a secret test late at night at Oscorp to try and work out the
bugs. Not only does his strength and nimbleness increase, but he also becomes a
homicidal maniac. He steals the emerald-colored suit of armor and jet-powered
glider that his company was also working on and wages terror on the streets of
New York City as the Green Goblin. Of course, by this time, young Peter Parker
has become Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, thanks to a bite from a
genetically created spider in a research lab. This was changed in the film from
a radioactive spider in the comics. Another smart idea was having Spider-Man
being able to shoot webs directly from his arms, without the need for Peter to
magically create mechanical web-shooters. The Spider-Man costume is dead-on
perfect, and Toby Maguire wears it well. In fact he was a perfect choice to play
Peter Parker/Spider-Man, even if he isn't given much range to play. Kirsten
Dunst is also very good as Mary Jane, and has a great on-screen chemistry with
Maguire. Another great performance comes from J.K. Simmons, who plays Daily
Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson to sheer cranky perfection.
The main problem with Spider-Man is that it is so faithful to the comic book
that it is very predictable. If you've read the Spider-Man comics as a kid, like
I did, then you'll know everything that will happen in this movie five minutes
before the characters do. The first hour of the film is taken up with the origin
story of both Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, and the lumbering pace this
creates gives Spider-Man the deadly feeling of never really taking off. And
despite the fact that they've got a magnificent actor like Willem Dafoe playing
Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, the character never truly feels like a he's a real
menace. Perhaps it's the goofy green outfit he wears that makes it so hard to
take the Green Goblin seriously, or maybe it's the stupidity of having Dafoe's
expressive face hidden under a glorified Halloween mask for most of the film's
running time.
Another problem is the special effects, which really aren't that special.
Computer Generated Imagery has performed wonders in motion pictures within the
last decade, but when they are done wrong, you get the feeling you're watching a
bad video game. That is exactly what I witnessed during the scene when Peter
Parker goes after the man who shot and killed Uncle Ben. Still clad in his
thrown-together red spider outfit from the wrestling match, Peter climbs up a
wall with a vengeance--only you can clearly see that that's not really Toby Maguire crawling up that wall.
Look closely at the eyes, and you'll see it's a CG-created figure.
Also, the scenes with an obviously CG Spider-Man swinging in-between the
buildings of Manhattan look pretty lame, as well. This sort of thing is pretty
jarring; it kept pulling me out of the story, which was already annoyingly
predictable to begin with. The two-disc DVD is loaded with features, including a commentary, "making of"
documentaries, a gag/outtake reel and much, much more. Thankfully, at least this
tepid blockbuster made enough money to warrant a really spectacular sequel that
soars head and shoulders above this production. --SF
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