Spider-Man was a lot better than I expected and it has gotten better over time as I have reflected on it in the process of writing this review.  There are a lot of flaws, make no mistake.  The film takes almost half of its running time to really start rolling, which is to say, to have a competent Spider-Man and an active super villain in The Green Goblin.  But once it gets rolling, it gets past the CG problems that plague the early swinging sequences and there are a couple of truly first-rate action sequences. 

The biggest problem throughout the whole thing is the screenplay, which slows everything down pretty much every time anyone other than Willem Dafoe has anything to say.  There are ideas and feelings that are repeated over and over and over again to the point of irritation.  And there is a lot of dialogue that comes right out of the early Spider-Man comic books.