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Movie Review: Spider-Man (Raimi)

And so the summer movie season begins for me. It could have been much, much worse. But it probably could have been a little better, although I may be biased because of the hype and the enthusiasm of other people for this movie.

I liked it. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst did a great job as Peter Parker and MJ Watson. MJ was very appealing, and Peter was a social loser in a very believable way. Willem Dafoe did OK as Norman Osborn, but I'm not sure anyone could have done better with that dialog. I didn't care for the Aunt May and Uncle Ben characters. The J. Jonah Jameson grated at first, but wound up being excellent.

The overall tone was good, very respectful of the theme of the comic book - with power comes responsibility, and that responsibility means trying to do the right thing even when it is difficult. And they marched through the storyline to set this up as expected, combining the original story and the more recent comic retelling with a few minor twists. I don't think they had a good handle on the science aspect of Peter's character, which was unfortunate. But they did show his transformation into a hero, from the wonderful initial scenes showing the rush of finding out about his powers to the inevitable showdown at the end. They were also good about not trying to be too serious about the whole thing, using the comic relief to poke at the holes it knew were there in the story, allowing us to relax and enjoy the story itself.

Some of the special effects didn't work for me - the computer generated bodies often seemed a little too floppy, reminding me of the stuffed Spider-Man I had as a kid that got thrown into a pool, removing all the stuffing from his joints. The Green Goblin costume was cool except for the helmet, which may have been more realistic but also made it hard to express emotion. I didn't like some of the use of slow-motion in non "spidey-sense" scenes. Spider-Man didn't have as many little quips as I had expected, although I'll be ok with that if it was just because he was starting out at the hero thing. Most importantly, though, I was disappointed Spider-Man didn't have to out-think the Goblin, he just had to outfight him. The joy of Spider-Man fights in the comics came from him always being weaker but still finding a way to beat the bad guy. This Spider-Man didn't seem to have to do much thinking.

Maybe they'll work on that by picking a tougher villain next time, although they certainly seemed to set up who it would be in this one. But I guess the movie was succesful, since here I am already talking about next time...