Does Whatever a Spider Can

May 4, 2002

Ths summer officially began today as Spider-Man opened on a gazillion screens nationwide… Everyone’s going to see this thing, so I really don’t feel the need to do a blowout review or anything. I didn’t have any real expectations and I thought Spidey was great fun and all. It’s not the strongest film ever, but Sam Raimi compresses a LOT of story into a short amount of time and keeps the gee whiz factor high. Technically, my only complaint was the rigid techno-design of the Green Goblin’s mask, which was a bit too cold to really feel scary or menacing.

The strangest thing about it is just how faithful (in plot point and in tone) it is to the O.G. Spidey books of the 60′s. There’s a part of me that thinks that Sam Raimi would’ve set the whole thing in the 60′s complete with paisley if he could have (MJ still wears the microskirt with the go-go boots). I’ll probably be the only one on earth that says this, but there’s a point in the movie where everything got so cheezeball and melodramatic that it started working on me on some whole other level. Maguire and Dunst are unhaltingly sincere saying their hopelessly outdated dialogue, and then J Jonah Jameson comes along like he was imported from a knockoff of “His Girl Friday” and the whole thing starts to look like the some mish-mosh time capsule of a script. Normally, I’d stab my eyes out with a straw for this sort of stuff, but somewhere along the line Maguire’s sleepy portrayal of Parker just kind of won me over.

More than anything, this movie is about Peter Parker and Mary Jane, and it’s as sweet a teen film as I’ve seen in a good while. You never really root for Spider-Man to deliver us from evil… you root for him to get a little somethin-somethin from Mary Jane. The agonizingly painful reality that Parker will never get anywhere, regardless of his powers is the great heartbreak. It’s all so strangely appealing.

Oh yeah, and some webs and stuff fly around and a couple of buildings fell and some other stuff like that. Go see it. Then you’ll hate it and send me horrible mail.

Posted in Moving Pictures