At last - I managed to see Spidey. It opened Friday, the 9th of July, and I got there on the 12th, which isn't bad, as I usually forget to get around to seeing movies, what with essays or assignments or practicals at Looniversity. (Haha. I call it that, 'cos it is one). I went to see it at Hemmingways Casino (the "N" was broken for a while, so it was a "CASIO"), and I just love the entry-way: it's a massive electronic revolving door. When we came out at about ten, it was raining like mad and the giant door was playing up; so some friends of mine were nearly trapped in the thing. It was funny. Of course, it's hard to laugh at other people when you're running in platform-esque shoes through the pouring rain to the car - the first rain of the whole Winter, in fact. I wasn't impressed. Why rain on me? I don't pollute the sky, so why did it have to be so mean? (Sorry, I'm really trippy at the moment. In fact, trippy is currently my favourite word).

I had never noticed how unmentionably hot Tobey Macguire is. Mmmmmmmm, Tobeeee. Of course, in real life he used to hang out with Leonardo DiCaprio, which tells you his sensitivity ratio is probably pretty low, while his break-things-and-play-video-games ratio is up, up, up... (I also deduce this, from images of him vomiting in the street that I saw in a magazine some time ago. But maybe he was just, er, not feeling well. Okay, he definitely wasn't feeling well, but maybe he was sick and not hungover - always possible... I suppose).

The start of the movie was pretty depressing. "Two years" since the last one, and in that time, Peter Parker hadn't achieved much. In fact, everything horrible seems to happen in this movie just to spite 'ol Spidey. He's starting to actually look and act like Spidey, but life is just throwing the guy curve-balls (in cricketing countries we'd say googlies and yorkers, or Chinamen. Don't ask. Apparently, "Chinamen" were first bowled by a Chinese guy, so it's not a mean xenophobic reference or anything. And it's bloody hard to hit them too - and no, I'm not referring to the people here, either, dammit...). I digress, as usual. Nothing is going right for the character at all. He's not handing in his university assignments (I've been there), he doesn't get to work on time, and his relationship with M.J. is going down the tubes. It's just so depressing. I found myself eating too many of my friend's boyfriends's Smarties (like M&M's, only better - because they're South African. Ha!)

Anyway, there were also a few extremely trippy moments in the movie. Apart from "The Importance of Being Earnest" (a triple entendre, as "earnest" was Victorian code for gay. An Oscar Wilde joke, apparently), which was a play half my classmates performed in, in our final school year. So that was a trip back to 1997... Another trip involved Wayne's World 2, where Wayne and Garth were stage-diving, carried across a crowd on their (the crowd's) hands. A similar thing happens to Spidey, after the James Bond-esque fight on the el. (I learned that this stands for "elevated railway". I have railways in my blood - my grandfather was a steam-engine driver, my father works in Signals, and my great-great-etc-grandfather, Earnest Albert Drewe - the extra "e" was added to impress, I gather - was the civil engineer in charge of building the Rocky Mountain Railroad. All done with mules, as I understand it. He retired back to Kent, in England, because I suppose the West was still too rough). Another really trippy thing was the strange Chinese woman singing oddball songs about Spiderman while playing a violin. I really felt drugs were involved in that, somehow. I can tell.

I liked the fact that the villian, this time, was human. Well, mostly, anyway. What I'm trying to say is, he wasn't simply an evil megalomaniac idiot. He had several redeeming features; in love with his wife, intelligent and wise (not the same thing), eager to better mankind, and thoughtful and interesting. I was impressed. The "Green goblin" character was flatter than tarmac on a hot day. When the whole fusion experiment thing goes wrong (typically), it's a tragic episode in the best ancient Greek tradition... and then the giant mechanical arms take over his brain. Urrk. Hence, mayhem and attempted murder.

I loved it when Spidey catches this massive building as it's about to fall on MJ, and while they're stuck there he grins at her and says, "So, how's it going?" or something. It was really cute. The only thing really odd about the whole thing was the way "Tobey" moved, because the CGI made him really look arachnid. It was oooky. I like my sooper-heroes at least vaguely human.

What really irritates me in any of these "blockbuster action" movies is the fact that, if you're female, nothing you do could ever make any impression on Mr Nasty-guts. Only the "hero" can ever fight the bad guy. Mmmmm. Sexist. The girls are reduced to "Screaming Female Extra #1" or "Useless love-interest damsel in distress" or even, strangely enough, "humorous aged granny-hostage-sidekick who packs a mean punch with, eg, any granny-type accessories she may have about her person, while saying something typical like Lawks! or Oh deary deary me". I get so BLOODY irritated. Of course, in Prohibitory Monster Horror movies, the protaganist is usually female, and thus too fragile to be horrendously ripped to pieces. The only one to survive, in fact (unless you're Drew Barrymore). I say "Prohibitory", because they seem designed to frighten girls into staying safely at home, knitting by the fire and washing up. If Doc Ock tried to pick me up as a hostage, I'd ram the nearest sharp instrument right up his posterior fundamental inhibitory chip.

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