Spider-man begins with the poor pitiful Peter Parker persueing the peeps. (note the excellent aliteration)  Peter is a smart but unpopular guy, whose only good friend is Harry Osborne, the son of a rich scientist.  Peter gets bitten by a strange genetically modified spider, and begins to change.  He becomes the man we all know as spider-man.  Sadly, this tranference takes some time, and though it is interesting to watch the stages the first time, this whole start of the movie is somewhat low on the rewatchability-meter, however once you get going it's easy to get back into.

The Special effects in spider-man are definately worth a second glance.  Nothing revolutionary, but just a job well done on bringing spider-man to a liveaction set.  The swinging through the city is done very well, as are the fight sequences.  It's interesting to guess when in the scenes it is digital, and when it's a guy in a suit.  Even without that, the fight sequences are very entertaining, and make for good laughs when spider-man beats up on normal crooks.

If you go into spider-man expecting a life affecting movie you will be disappointed, but if you go in expecting fun, you'll get it.

-Trekie