4 out of 5

Director: Marc Webb

Raimi’s Spider-Man has secured its place in film history by not only kicking off the first trickles of the comic movie flood, but also still standing as one of the only true-to-form depictions of the format on the silver screen, albeit focusing more on the classic (and campily stylized) Golden or Silver age of its character.  Marc Webb’s reboot is indeed that, seemingly jumping on the darker movie trend of its time to ditch Raimi’s primary colors and daylight for a snarky, shadow-slinkin’ hero.  However, our writers and director remember to keep all of those core elements that defined the Mutant Universe as well as made Spider-Man the lasting character he is, and by combining that with the film’s relative grounded nature, we actually end up with much richer versions of Peter Parker, Uncle Ben, Aunt May and so on than the previous trilogy’s cartoonish structure allowed.  The 2-hour+ runtime is appropriately used to transition us from teen to city savior, and Webb and Andrew Garfield really score in portraying Peter’s mawkish awkwardness (in and out of costume), this time cast as a skateboarding, hair-gelled oddball genius as opposed to a straight-up nerd.  It works, thankfully, because the film stays mostly friendly in tone – the school bully exists as Flash and the insane villain shows up via Rhys Ifans’ Lizard, but Flash backs down and Gwen Stacy is still smiling by film’s end and Spider-Man is remembering to crack wise even when getting beaten to a pulp.  It’s essentially a more natural rhythm.  However, the trade off of abandoning the continual heightened realism is that when things DO get truly comic book – the CGI-character battles – it feels out of place and somewhat procedural.  These moments are video game cut-scenes and not exactly impassioned film-making.  But they’re kept focused and short and clear, and since we actually like all of our actors, it’s nice that you actually feel rewarded by when things return to people and dialogue.  This is more truly somewhere between three and four stars, but I’ll default upward because this was a legitimately concocted film, infinitely more entertaining and rich than the apparent cash-grab of the reboot would suggest.  One final plus: web-shooters.