Movie Review: Spiderman

Wow, talk about a cool movie!

I've always been a big Spidey fan and have lamented the absence of a Spiderman movie ever since the original Batman movie came out.

I'm not going to draw out this review. The movie doesn't really need a review. It's a simple movie, nothing is really complicated. There are no no complex themes, or anything that really needs interpretation. Good and Evil are easy to identify. This simplicity is part of the beauty.

The movie is a comic book put on film, and that's all that I wanted. It has the feel of a comic and not a movie. You can't put deep thematic developments into a rag aimed at kids. You can put simple action, black and white moral situations and heroic and villainous characters. The formula is simple and time tested. The action and moral clarity dominate the film so that we can get to the action. Sappy love stories are, at best, secondary - young boys want to see fights, not kisses. Though perhaps these boys, now that they are older, would prefer to see Kirsten Dunst.

The acting was fine, though Aunt May and Spiderman get the best treatment. The Green Goblin (Willem Defoe) is great. Defoe was an excellent choice. He can play the sympathetic father, lunatic, businessman, and supervillain. He gets my vote as one of the most under appreciated actors out there. Charges of over acting have been levied, and perhaps they are justified. But this is a comic book. Things like heroes and villains are all supposed to "super" so exaggeration is necessary. If you don't like it, well, guess what? It's part of the genre, too bad.

As for the visuals, well, contrary to Mr Ebert, they were perfect. The images portray everything as they should be portrayed. The ordinary scenes are ordinary, but when the masks get put on, the rules don't apply. That's what being a superhero is. If the rules applied to you, you wouldn't be "super." Again Ebert is wrong. Parker has his problems in the real world, and that's why so many people can sypathize with him, but when he is Spiderman he leaves his problems behind and the rules that physical and social that we all deal with no longer apply.

In short, this is a comic book on film and it works - I like it.

On the official Chris' Choice scale Spiderman gets four stars.

****