Film review - Spider-Man (12) (From Stroud News and Journal)

Film review - Spider-Man (12)

THOUGH I grew up in the comic book generation the magic completely passed me by. Where my contemporaries eagerly awaited the arrival of Beano and Dandy I remained baffled by their enthusiasm.

To this day I find talking bubbles distracting. However the comic book is one of the most ignored literary forms of the last century. Not on the level of Shakespeare or Dickens, but in many cases an accurate sign of the times. For instance X Men (2000) recently filmed by director Bryan Singer, was originally written around the time when the civil rights movement was in the news.

Similarly Superman was enlisted in World War 11 in an attempt to create hope. Recently Spider-Man was voted the most popular of all the superheroes. Why? Because the real person behind Spider-Man is a flawed character we can all relate to. He is not a billionaire with problems like Batman's Bruce Wayne nor an alien like Superman, he's a gawky teenager. The comic industry is huge with each famous superhero having at least three spin-offs running at the same time and then there are the films, so the money keeps rolling in.

Spectacled orphan Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) lives with his loving Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) in Queens, New York.

He is a geeky teenager who since he was six years old has held a candle for the red headed girl next door Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). But it has been a hopeless case of unrequited love as she barely acknowledges him.

One day he and his only friend Harry Osborn (James Franco), the son of wealthy scientist Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), go on a school outing to a spider exhibition at Columbia University.

While Peter is taking a photograph of Mary Jane for the school magazine he manages to get bitten by a genetically engineered spider. (When the comic story first started in 1962 it was the year of the Cuban Missile crisis and then the spider was radioactive - how we progress). Soon Peter discovers he has new powers with super strength, great speed, sixth sense and the ability to eject webbing strong enough to swing from. Wanting to impress Mary Jane he enters a wrestling competition in the hope of winning enough money to buy an old sports car.

Mary Jane's boyfriend Flash (Joe Manganiello) has got one and Peter thinks it will make him more visible to her. However when the promoter diddles him out of his prize, he then refuses to help the man when he is subsequently robbed. The consequences of this are tragic and make Peter rethink how best to use his newly acquired powers.

Concurrently Norman Osborn's company is about to lose a big contract - they develop human performance enhancement for the military. So he decides to try out the new untested product on himself, resulting in him turning into the storys villain, a character dubbed by the press The Green Goblin on account of his shining green suit and weird mask.

This Jekyll and Hyde chap is the film's weakest link as he is simply not scary or interesting enough in his armour. I am told most of Spider-Man's enemies are pretty lame so the blame cannot be placed at Dafoe's door, particularly as he is brilliant as the scientist and in his transition stages. The rest of the film may have its faults, but it would be crass to mention them when there is so much to praise. In the case of Maguire (The Cider House Rules 1999) you could not find a more perfect protagonist.

He does nerd and champion with equal charm - of all the young actors on the big screen today he is quite the most engaging. Astonishingly Columbia initially refused to cast him, but director Sam Raimi insisted and fortunately got his way. Dunst's Mary Jane is well portrayed as she gradually becomes aware of Peter. It's nice to see Raimi's loyalty to his friends: Bruce Campbell the star of his Evil Dead trilogy not a man blessed with much talent as an actor except for his eyebrows, which I believe trained at the same school as Roger Moores is given a cameo in this film.

If you are a comic-book fan, writer David Koepp (Panic Room) never loses that light-hearted wham-bam feel. However Raimi has oddly made the scenes on the ground more appealing than all the commercial special effects gimmickry. I think this is why I so much prefer this film to the others in the superhero genre. As blockbusters go this is considerably better and more amusing than most.

8/10