John's Movie Musings

OK, so me and my posse went to the midnight showing of Spiderman 2 last night. The theater was kind enough to let everyone into the theater at 10pm, rather than stand in line for hours so we got to play 3-man Advanced Wars 2 from the comfort of our seats, listening to some no name, unsigned band the theater is trying to pimp out. Those two hours flew by quickly (with no help from my poor strategery in AW2) and soon enough the lights dimmed and cheers of joy erupted from the audience.

Now I'm not going to sit here and critique the details of this movie for you. For most of you, not much will keep you from seeing it. You know you want to see it. And trust me, you NEED to see this film. It's the best film this summer, and it's the best superhero film EVER. 'Nuff said.

But I will address what the critics are saying about this. You've all heard all the rave reviews this film has been getting. In fact, it's sitting at 96% Freshness rating now at Rottentomatoes.com. But there are those critics out there who live in a place I like to call Clueless. Here's a few...

First up is Boxofficemojo.com. If you've never visited this site, do so. Movie release strategy and finances fascinate me, and if that's your thing, this is the place for you to be. So, by logic, you'd assume that this site is run by accountants. A quick look at their reviewing history shows that accountants do not like superhero movies with no movie ever earning more than a 'C.' The Spidey 2 review here is really no different than what you'd expect from an accountant. He completely missed all humor in the film (Spiderman delivering pizza is classic) but, really, perhaps I expect too much from the bean counters. So if you've got a number fetish, perhaps this review will help you. For everyone else, read this review like you read tax law.

Next up is The Adrenaline Vault (www.avault.com). This site used to be my source for PC gaming goodness, but it seems to be in a decline lately, with other sites getting news info first. So to compete, The Vault has started doing movie reviews. Why gamers are experts at movies, I'll never know. But enough about my skills at calling cooking pots black; how's the review? Well, pretty good until this statement comes along, "The problem with the movie is that it doesn't stretch far from the original. " Now it's painfully obvious that this person fell asleep halway through the movie. I won't spoil it for ya, but things get DRASTICALLY different in the Spidey Universe at the end of this ride. Being a gamer, I would expect the guy do have mastered the art of staying up all night. If he can't make it through a two hour movie, I really have to question his qualifications as a gamer, and his title as "Geek" in general. This review should have been left locked in the vault.

Last up is Metacritic.com. Metacritic.com is the BEST place to get an overall view of a movie by averaging all reviews into one score. Very handy. A quick glance at the reviews show that there's one black sheep in the crowd of rave reviews. A review from The Village Voice gave it a 60. The bad reviews are always the most interesting, so I had to see what he had to say. Here's a snip, "...in this incarnation, as opposed to the '60s comic book version, he's more innocuously depressed than defensively paranoid." I really have no idea what that means, but it's incomparably lame. Obviously Spiderman did not have enough big words in it for this reviewer. Perhaps next time he should just read a dictionary. Webster even has the word "web" in it.

So there ya have it, peeps. You will go see Spiderman regardless of what anyone says and you can go without fear that it'll disappoint.

Grade: A+