I'm going to break convention in this review and give you the good news first. This Spiderman flick has a few things going for it that make it worth a watch despite the bad news.
First and foremost, this one movie accomplishes something that Sam Raimi couldn't pull off with an entire trilogy: it got the Spiderman character right. When this actor puts the costume on, he closely resembles the Spiderman of the comic books I remember: an incurable smartass; nerves of steel; bubbling over with cocksurity even when doom seems imminent; and a selfless hero in the truest sense of the word.
As Peter Parker, the character was somewhat less canonical...but I don't mind that so much. (BTW, the Toby McGuire Peter was closer to the high school nerd of the earliest comics.) Frankly, Parker's personal life in the comics was often so angst-ridden, disastrous and...real...as to be depressing. This Peter Parker is some kind of preppie-hip, though he certainly has his problems.
Read the entire review at Virtual pulp!
