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Nothing I write here is going to sway anyone's decision to see or avoid
Spider-Man 2, the eagerly awaited sequel to Sam Raimi's 2002 runaway hit
that still ranks as the highest-grossing non-Star
Wars/non-Spielberg/non-Titanic film of all time. Instead, I'm just going
to
gush about it like some kind of super fan-boy who just kissed his first
girl, and you're just going to let it slide. Deal?
Spider-Man 2 (thank you, Jebus, for not tacking a colon and a silly,
unnecessarily long phrase onto the title) takes place about two years
after
the first picture ends. Those two years have seen Peter Parker (Tobey
Maguire) move out of his Aunt May's (Rosemary Harris) house and take up
residence in a skeevy studio in a neighborhood that would be frightening
to
most non-superheroes. His lifelong crush-slash-former neighbor, Mary Jane
Watson (Kirsten Dunst), has become a burgeoning star as both a model and
an
actress, and Peter's best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), has taken
over the Oscorp company but is still brooding about the death of his
father
at the hands of New York's "webbed menace." That's what the Daily Bugle,
or
rather its crass editor-in-chief (the still hysterical J.K. Simmons),
calls
Peter's costumed alter-ego. As a result, Peter has stopped supplying the
Bugle with photos of Spider-Man, which also means he's been forced to
deliver pizzas just to make ends meet.
The first hour or so of Spider-Man 2 is relatively light on the action as
it
****trays Peter as a beaten-down kid with the weight of the world on his
shoulders. He's heavily burdened by his dual life as a mild-mannered
college student and a crime-fighting bad-ass, causing Peter to fall behind
in school and lose his pizza gig. He's behind on his rent, too, and the
stress briefly affects his souped-up spider abilities at rather
inop****tune
times. In addition to harboring his whopper-sized secrets from the three
closest people in his life, Peter also has to deal with the city's latest
insane villain: An Oscorp scientist named Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina),
whose experiment to harness energy leaves him with both a dead wife (Donna
Murphy) and four indestructible and free-thinking metal arms grafted to
his
spine.
I don't know if I was in the right mood or what, but I bought everything
(aside from the increasingly fake-looking CGI scenes of Spidey swinging
around the city) in Spider-Man 2 hook, line and sinker. Maybe I was merely
caught off-guard by the film operating at an emotional level much higher
than one has come to expect from a summer blockbuster. I hate admitting
this, but I was on the verge of tears on more than one occasion, and even
shouted, "Holy ****!" during one of the sequel's three conclusions.
The film's surprising poignancy can be directly traced to screenwriter
Alvin
Sargent - an Oscar winner for Julia and Ordinary People - who perfectly
complements Raimi's filmmaking here (he adapts from a screen story created
by Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, as well as Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon). So expect less of the one-liners
and more of the biting the inside of your cheek so you won't start bawling
in front of your date. You can, however, plan on cameos from the usual
suspects: Stan Lee (always in screen adaptations of his comic books),
Bruce
Campbell (always in Raimi's films, as well as most by the Coen brothers),
and Hal Sparks (always in...okay, I haven't figured this one out just
yet).
As far as the acting goes, this might be the tightest work Maguire has
ever
produced. His Peter looks genuinely broken down and willing to abandon -
a
la a certain Clark Kent in a certain sequel to a certain other superhero
film - a life most people would kill to have, just so he can settle down
and
be like everyone else. As his counterpart, Molina is much more subdued
than
the scenery-chewing Willem Dafoe, and this helps take his "Doc Oc" to
higher
levels of realism and danger. Simmons still steals every scene he's in as
Peter's cigar-chomping boss, but Franco's role is too skeletal to show off
his meaty acting chops. I hear he'll get a better chance in the next
sequel.
2:07 - PG-13 for stylized action violence
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X-RAMR-ID: 38157
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1292799
X-RT-TitleID: 1133520
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 10/10
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