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By David Ansen
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When Christopher Reeve played Superman's alter ego, four-eyed, mild-mannered Clark Kent, he was never really convincing: he looked like a hunky movie star pretending to be a nerd. Tobey Maguire is something else. This superhero--Spider-Man by name--really is a vulnerable kid when the costume comes off, and it makes a big difference: it gives this $120 million production a tone it can call its own. Casting Maguire as Peter Parker, the high-school outcast who gains superhuman powers after he is bitten by a mutant arachnid, automatically alters the scale of this Marvel Comics transplant. With his quiet voice, saucer eyes and tight bow tie of a smile, Maguire is such a minimalist actor that the camera is obliged to observe him in close-up, where his subtle sweetness can be savored. Director Sam Raimi, working from David Koepp's screenplay, wisely anchors his big action-adventure flick on Maguire's modest but beguiling persona.
There are plenty of FX on display in "Spider-Man"--some dazzling, some clunky, some so clearly computer-generated they fail to astonish the way a good old-fashioned stunt could. But the good news is that the film doesn't feel pushy and overproduced. It has a B-movie unpretentiousness, a nice sense of humor, an endearing corniness and some real chemistry between Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, the beautiful next-door neighbor Peter has worshiped in vain since childhood. (The movie's most bizarre image may be their first kiss, with her standing up and Spider-Man hanging from his feet: there's something hilariously obscene about this innocent upside-down smooch.)
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It's best not to expect too much of this movie: it's nothing to get terribly excited about. The best moments come when Peter first discovers, and tries out, his new powers--scaling buildings, spinning webs, leaping from building to building. Appearing in a tacky early draft of his spider costume, he enters a pro-wrestling contest hoping to win a $3,000 cash prize. Once he becomes a full-fledged crime-fighting superhero, however, and his archenemy the Green Goblin appears, "Spider-Man" begins to resemble a dozen other gung-ho summer entertainments.
The Goblin is Peter's dark mirror image. He's another human accidentally altered into a superbeing: weapons manufacturer Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), a Jekyll-and-Hyde schizo lusting for ultimate power. Dafoe hurls himself gamely into this comic-book villain, but it's hard not to have a "been there, done that" response to this battle between good and evil. This isn't the last time we'll be getting that feeling: deja vu is Hollywood's favorite ingredient this summer. But even at its most generic, Raimi's amiable movie doesn't forget its human scale. So two cheers for "Spider-Man." Its two hours pass fast and easy.
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