Spider-Man (2002)

I still truly want to love the "Spider-Man" film. I had been waiting my entire geek life for a big screen adaptation worthy of the comic book exploits of my favorite superhero, and I got it in 2002. After all, I was vastly disappointed even at age 5 by a late 1970s TV film version. But I can't love this film. Despite director Sam Raimi ("A Simple Plan") pitching the ball high, and Tobey Maguire ("The Cider House Rules") is the ideal player for Peter Parker, the nerd who's bitten by a radioactive (or genetically altered here) spider and gains the ability to do whatever a spider can.

The film reaches a perfect Marvel highpoint in a dazzling scene where a distraught Parker, wearing jeans and a red sweatshirt, tracks the thug who shot his beloved Uncle Ben. Raimi and his VFX crew allow the viewer to feel like he or she is Spider-Man, swinging and leaping from one NYC skyscraper to the next. Then the hour mark hits, and the film just breaks apart with the full appearance of the Green Goblin. That would be Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn -- the genius scientist and father of Parker's only friend Harry -- who's gone insane after an experiment gone wrong.

It's not Dafoe's fault. It's the damn costume -- metallic, cheap and with a helmet that looks like an inverted penis, the character is laughable bad. Each encounter between hero and villain grows more tiresome as you see Dafoe's near-hidden mouth mimic words behind this dumb mask that looks painful to wear. It kills the film.

Nit-pickling? Yes. But every comic book story rests not on its super hero but the villains he or she is pitted against, and this one fails. My disappointments here were corrected in the vastly better sequel. As the soon-to-be doomed Harry, James Franco skates circles around Maguire in acting and charisma. He's the breakout star here. B