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Kick a boy enough times, and he'll become a man. The question is, of what sort? In his long-awaited feature portrait of the comic-book hero Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brings forth a kaleidoscopic answer full of hope and verve. Flashy enough for kids and insightful enough to engage adults, the movie will line 'em up at the multiplex and send 'em home with a few rudimentary but vital life lessons. Pretty snazzy for a big studio product.

The keenest lesson a lot of fans will take away from this first major Spidey feature is that patience is rewarded. Global legions who obsess over the 40-year-old Marvel Comics creation of writer Stan Lee and designer Steve Ditko have had plenty of time to absorb all the particulars of Spider-Man, his family and friends, and especially his enemies: Dr. Octopus, Lizard, Venom and my freaky fave, Typeface, to name but a few. Here, however, screenwriter David Koepp wisely sticks to only one major villain -- the Green Goblin -- and tells the origin of the great web-slinger thoughtfully, as if for the first time. Thus, unlike the fairly rapid-fire segments of Bryan Singer's equally successful Marvel adaptation, X-Men, we get one focused, old-fashioned story, which unfolds more like the latter-day cinematic introductions of DC Comics' Superman, Swamp Thing and Batman franchises.

Commencing with an appropriately webby title sequence and the familiar syncopations of composer Danny Elfman (who knows from superheroes, including Batman and Raimi's own inventive Darkman), we get straight to business. The kicked boy in question is 17-year-old Peter Parker (26-year-old Tobey Maguire), a schlubby dweeb who resides with his sweet, elderly Aunt May (Rosemary Harris, perfect) and compassionate Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson, likewise) in a cookie-cutter house in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Though speeding into adulthood himself, Maguire imbues Peter with enough wide-eyed innocence to make the previous crop of Hollywood soft boys -- say, the late River Phoenix or the MIA Andrew McCarthy -- look like Hannibal Lecter by comparison.

Introducing himself via voice-over with the appropriate tone of a boy-man who still takes himself seriously, Parker explains, somewhat misleadingly, that "this, like any story worth telling, is about a girl." Indeed, there's an inner mountain to climb to reach Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst, in a fetching red wig), who is, in this telling, literally the girl next door. (There's no apparent sign of Parker's other pulp panel squeeze, Gwen Stacy, although the horror of her untimely demise is suggested by this story's climactic set piece.) Mary Jane -- or MJ -- is everything a science geek-cum-photographer-cum-graphic artist could desire, and, refreshingly, she's content to be engaging and pleasant rather than just running around kicking arbitrary ass. For most of the film, however, the nymph's reply to the nerd is (paraphrased), "um…like…um…" -- the nice way of saying no.

Life for bumbling, bespectacled Peter seems to be a great big bang-up -- his true parents dead, his presence mocked by the mean kids on the bus and his thunder consistently stolen by MJ's dumb-ass boyfriend, Flash Thompson (Joe Manganiello). All this changes when his high school class is invited to Columbia University to explore, you know, one of those exhibits dedicated to nanotechnology and genetically mutated spiders. That's when fate strikes.

Utilizing the loudest set of fangs imaginable, an escaped Über-spider -- blithely and quite hilariously dismissed by the Columbia guide -- descends onto Peter's hand and seals his destiny. Peter excuses himself, returns home, declines dinner ("No, thanks, I had a bite") and collapses to his bedroom floor, the better to transmogrify into a unique human-spider hybrid. (This is not altogether unlike being licked by a weirdly bred cat and turning into an insane, screeching furball, but in a comic-book universe, you gotta roll with what they give you.) The next morn, Peter's got a brand-new bag, from the (possibly computer-generated) cut abs to the perfect vision to surprising powers that play out in splendidly directed action scenes at school.

And here's where it gets mythic, as the birth of any hero immediately summons the presence of a suitable nemesis. Early on, Koepp and Raimi introduce us to Peter's friend Harry Osborn (James Franco, star of TNT's James Dean) and to Harry's military-industrialist father, Norman (a very game Willem Dafoe). Although Harry is friendly enough, another of the movie's lessons is never trust the wealthy. Not only does Harry try to put the moves on MJ, his mega-tycoon father has the audacity to turn himself into a flying, homicidal maniac in peculiarly stupid-looking armor. This process involves career tension at the family biz, Oscorp, plus the assistance of well-intentioned fellow scientist Dr. Mendel Stromm (Ron Perkins), wicked military experiments and a scary lab accident. Thanks to milky contact lenses and some shock edits, the nasty Green Goblin is born.

Raimi's Evil Dead films allowed him to explore the struggles of a lone hero in a world gone mad. With these wild horrors, as well as the Hercules and Xena series he developed and produced, he gave himself carte blanche to strip-mine mythology, lace it with yuks and serve it up in outlandishly cinematic terms. None of his trademark style is lost on Spider-Man, which allows the director to play with all sorts of knockout visuals (effects by John Dykstra and sorties of animators; costumes by the brilliant James Acheson) while telling a universal story. The effects are smashing, yet there's a heart behind them.