SpiderMan 2 Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)June 30th, 2004
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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 portrays 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 inopportune 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 shit!" 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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