Who or what is Spider-Man? Well, he’s a super-hero, created when a shy school-boy named Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider. When he fails to stop a criminal who subsequently kills his uncle, Peter Parker realizes that he must use his powers to fight injustice – Spider-Man is born. The radioactive spider is nicely updated to a genetically engineered one in this movie. We get to see Peter’s first attempts at using his superpowers, and so on. A goodly amount of the movie is spent on establishing the characters. But this doesn’t hurt – it’s fun.

What can I say, the movie is fine. It’s not boring (except the love scenes near the end, but hey, it’s just about still bearable), good action, drama, and appropriate comedy. The actors did a rather good job of portraying believable characters. I think the one thing I disliked most was the costume of the evil guy. The comparison to X-Men – the last modern superheroes movie – is favorably for Spider-Man: The story is not so much better as it is told better.

We paid 3 Euro, so I guess I can’t complain. If you haven’t seen Spider-Man yet, go watch it, you probably won’t regret. If you can catch a showing (or the DVD, once it’s out), you should give this movie a chance. If you like the super-hero genre at all, you won’t be disappointed.