Spider-Man

Spider-Man

My bias: I'm a life-long comic book fan/reader.

I had this shit-eating grin on my face for most of the time I was watching Spider-Man. Sam Raimi nailed the atmosphere of the comic undertones well. The CGI was good (some of it might have made me wish I had some dramamine on hand), though it could have been a little tighter, but none of it disappointed me. Showing Spidey's point of view as he was swinging through the Big Apple was a nice touch, as was the sheer exhilaration of such power and freedom Peter came to possess, though at a high personal cost.

The casting was pretty much ideal with the exception of Harry Osborne (James Franco), who was a little bit over-powered by the rest of the cast in the acting chops department. Loved the chemistry between Tobey and Kirsten, they click. Willem Dafoe did a good job with the duality aspect of the role of Norman Osborne. Even the revamped Green Goblin exo-suit made sense in the context of the film.

The origin story not only followed much of the comic book story, but was able to inject 3-dimensionality into the story from a 2-dimension source material.

The action sequences could have been a little tenser, but Raimi never over-plays the super-slow-mo action hand that many other films fall into the trap of doing for the sake of being cool, no, Raimi goes for almost real-time decision making in Spidey's battle with GG, and the action had both impact and inertia. The physics of the action scenes were never to the point of you were rolling your eyes at the action (a la Blade II, just a recent example).

I thought Peter's and MJ's declaration of their attraction bordered the "You make me want to be a better man" speech out of "As Good As It Gets".

The pacing of the film never sagged, and that says a lot for a 2 hour film. Any slow parts immediately led to a payoff for the audience.

And the ending offers a nice opening/setup to a sequel down the road, plus, it's entirely possible the writers can do the Gwen Stacy story in a sequel as well.

I give this film a grade of "A" for Amazing, or 4 out of 4 stars. Loved it.