Like all cartoon superheroes, Spiderman has a good story of how he came to be. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is a shy, nearsighted high school senior who’s an easy target for bullies. He has a crush on his next door neighbor Mary Jane “M.J.” Watson (Kirsten Dunst) who, while pleasant to him, has no reciprocal feelings. Making things more difficult for Peter is the fact that his only friend, Harry, also likes M.J. and comes from serious money, since his dad is the billionaire industrialist, Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe).

Peter’s world is altered forever when a mutant spider bites him while he’s on a class field trip to a Columbia University research library. Suddenly, Peter discovers he has incredible strength, leaping and climbing abilities, and, best of all, can spin gigantic cobwebs.

Just as Peter is undergoing a transformation, so is Norman Osborn. Osborn has contracted with the military to develop a formula that can turn a person into a human rocket. When Pentagon brass threaten to pull the plug on the project for lack of progress, Osborn drinks his own concoction and becomes a virtually indestructible madman on a motorized skateboard known as the Green Goblin.

Tobey Maguire is fine as the self-effacing hero, while Kirsten Dunst nicely handles the role of the damsel in distress. Following in the tradition of Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor from 1978's “Superman” and Jack Nicholson’s Joker in 1989's “Batman,” Dafoe has the fun of getting off all of the good one-liners, and the film drags when he is not on camera.

Director Sam Raimi unfortunately follows superhero film protocol by staging the obligatory 20-minute mano a mano showdown between Spidy and the Goblin. It doesn’t take that long to figure out who is going to prevail. “Spiderman” is worth seeing but not waiting in line for.