Title: Spider-Man
File Under: Record-Breaking Superhero Hijinks
Score: 9.9
As cool as: The chicks in your comics coming to life and becoming your love slaves.
I, being a HUGE Spider-Man fan, may be providing you readers with a majorly biased opinion here, but Spider-Man absolutely ROCKED.  Hard fucking core, as Mr. Pickles would say.  Even the girls I went with thoroughly enjoyed this flick, which is saying a lot for a superhero movie.  I tried dragging some female friends to X-Men, and ended up having to pour sodas on their laps to keep them from snoring.  This movie, however, was totally to the contrary.

First of all, I don't think they could have picked a better person to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire.  He nailed it all the way from the geeky Parker to the cheeky Spider-Man.  Kirsten Dunst was great as Mary Jane (all comic inaccuracies aside), Dafoe was truly menacing as the goblin, Even "Macho man" Randy Savage (Poffo?) and Bruce Campbell turned in great performances.  Which leads me to beleive that Ebert is a big fat idiot for his review.  The man obviously didn't know what he was talking about, as usual.  But what else is new?  Does it have to be film noir to be good, Roger?  Seriously.

As I'm sure you interweb purveyors have heard, the story isn't *exactly* what happens in the comics.  But they stick to their guns at the most important points, and give Spider-Man the touch of life he's always deserved as a character (ESPECIALLY if you ever tried to sit through the 1978 live-action catastrophe).  The highly publicized web-shooter issue is handled gracefully (You see the organic web shooters once, they work, and you just deal with it).  The origins of both Spider-Man and the Goblin are very true to form.  They even shoved in a few obscure references for the hardcore fanbases out there, such as Peter getting fired from his job with "Dr. Connors" (Curt Connors, the Lizard, rumored to be in the next flick alongside Doc Ock), or "Eddie" trying to take pictures of the Webhead for the Bugle (Eddie Brock, AKA Venom).  Some might even have caught that Osborne's assistant, Dr. Stromm, had some comic fame for his robotic abilities.  The action sequences were great, and as realistic as possible considering you're dealing with a guy who has the powers of a spider and a psycho on a one-man air-scooter.  Even the webswinging, which I had apprehensions for, came off seamlessly.  And the battle at the end is not to be missed (even it is true to the comics).  The ending has been somewhat of a dissapointment for some, but just remember this: Spider-Man doesn't have too many perfectly happy endings.  That's why so many people identify with him so much.

Oh, and the movie made damn near $115 million in 3 days.  WOW.

says: Go see this movie.  Then see it agian.  Then buy it, and show all your friends.