Critic Reviews
- "Spider-Man is an almost-perfect extension of the experience of reading comic-book adventures."
- "At its best, Spider-Man takes the adolescent yearning at the heart of most superhero sagas and gives it a lovely swing."
- "With earnest, unpretentious delivery, Maguire is an eminently likable hero audiences will root for from his earliest moments as the class wimp."
- "In emphasizing angst over energy, the movie is much like its hero -- not the dashing crime fighter in a red-and-black bodysuit but the introspective nerd who both endears and exasperates."
- "The perils and advantages of being bitten by a genetically modified spider are made abundantly clear in Sam Raimi's enjoyable, if broken-backed, exercise in high-cost pulp."
- "Coarse mayhem notwithstanding, Spider-Man will probably provoke a pandemic of arachnophilia."
- "In the face of almighty expectations, director Sam Raimi delivers an efficient, entertaining film which promises to crush box office records."
- "To me the only marvel about this Marvel Comics cinema hero is that Americans should be going to see him in such large numbers."
