Spiderman

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco and Rosemary Harris

Rating: PG-13 for stylized violence and action

The Summer Movie Season has officially started (even though it’s only May) and the big question on everyone’s mind is whether the 2002 Summer Movie Season will top the dreadfully bad 2001 Summer Movie Season. And if Spiderman (the actual spelling of the title is Spider-Man, but that bugs the hell out of me, so I’m calling it Spiderman) is any indication of what this Summer will be bringing us, then have no fear, this year will easily be better than last year’s crop of Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, A.I., and Jurassic Park III.

When a film is based on such a popular storyline, like Spiderman is, it is always a question if the filmmaker can create a film that can give the hardcore geeks and the normal uninformed public a movie they can both enjoy. Now even though for a time I read the Spiderman comic book series, I feel as if I am closer to the uninformed public in my understanding of Spiderman. So I can’t tell you hardcore geeks whether or not this film will live up to your geeky standards. But what I can say is that this is a fun movie. Sam Raimi (director of the cheesy cult Evil Dead series) would never be my choice to direct a film. His last two films, The Gift and For Love of the Game, were two absolutely terrible films. And so for a while I was really scared about what would become of this film. Raimi was handed a gift in this script, which he could either use to vault him into Spielberg-type stature, or lead him to be hunted down and killed by a gang of Spiderman geeks dressed in Spiderman costumes shooting fake web stuff out of devices attached to their arms. But Raimi certainly does not screw this easy moneymaker up. That is not to say that Raimi does a great job, but he does do an adequate job. The only two problems that I really saw with what Raimi did deals with the handling of computer graphics and the brief time in the final fight scene where he makes the mistake of putting the camera too close to the fight thus obscuring the details of it. I sometimes felt the CG effects were too fake looking and did not blend well with the real world details. But I do respect the fact that Raimi used the real actors a lot more than he had to. With a film like this, he could have basically used computer graphics anytime Spiderman and Green Goblin were in costume and gotten away with it. But Raimi doesn’t cheat the audience, he gives us the real actors most of the time and only uses computer graphics to add in the things, such as Spiderman swinging between buildings, that really can’t be done.

Casting Tobey Maguire as Spiderman was probably the best move they made in this film. He is not an awesome actor, but he is a good one and he fits what I would imagine Peter Parker/Spiderman would be like in real life. He has a very unassuming look to him, which makes him seem rather harmless and normal. And that is exactly what Peter Parker would be. Compared to the actors they had considered for the part, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Leonardo DiCaprio, Maguire has that look to him which makes him more believable as Parker, just like Michael Keaton fit the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman much better than George Clooney. Kirsten Dunst was an excellent choice for Mary Jane Watson. Not only is she wicked hot, which helps all the lonely Spiderman geeks, but she really isn’t a bad actress. Again, like Maguire, Kirsten Dunst isn’t a great actress, but she doesn’t try to step over the line of normal human emotions into the scene stealing role of Julia Roberts, which makes her good in my book. Willem Dafoe has a perfect bad guy look to him. But unfortunately I didn’t feel like the Green Goblin lived up to Dafoe’s bad guy look. I’m not sure of the origin of Green Goblin in the comic book series, but what I do know is I don’t like it when the story tries to make the evil supervillain have a human side. I want to be 100% behind the hero in a movie like this. I never want to feel sorry for the villain and I never want to not want him to be killed. Having a perfect good guy and a super evil bad guy is what makes a good epic film. Now I understand that there is no such thing in real life as a perfect good guy and a super evil bad guy, but this is a movie and in movies they don’t need to be realistic.

Overall, for a Summer Blockbuster, this film actually lives up to the hype given to it. Which is a nice thing to see after last year’s big hype, big crap Summer Movie Season. Spiderman is a fun movie that is well put together and even throws in a pretty good script, with the exception of a few cheesy lines. And the wrestling scene with Bruce Campbell (star of the Evil Dead movies) and Macho Man Randy Savage is an excellent touch. While this movie doesn’t reach the awesome standard of superhero movie set by Tim Burton’s Batman, it does reach the level of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, which is fine by me and probably by most of the movie going public. Let’s just hope the rest of the Summer Movie Season can live up to the standard that Spiderman has set in the leadoff position.

RATING: 70%