SPIDERMAN MOVIE REVIEW

Spider-Man: A perfect entry for the spin cycle (Groen review)

From pricey action to deliciously cheap sight gags, the acrobatic arachnid turns out to be even better on the second go-round

Courtesy The Globe & Mail

by Rick Groen

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - The Globe & Mail, Page R1

Spider-Man 2

Directed by Sam Raimi

Written by Alvin Sargent, Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Michael Chabon

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, James Franco

Classification: PG

Rating: ****½

At the end of another long day battling crime, what's an overtaxed superhero to do? His laundry, of course. So there he is, a mere Peter Parker like the rest of us, short on coins and forced to mix his coloureds with his whites, his Spidey costume with his delicates, whereupon the washer rinses and spins and spits out his bleeding alter egos into a rainbow coalition of comedy: Oh, no, pink and blue undies. That's when I fell hard for Spider-Man 2. In a genre where costs are routinely counted in the scores of millions, here's something as rare as it is refreshing -- not an obscenely expensive sight, but a terrifically cheap sight gag.

And, yes, the pricey action is pretty good too. Director Sam Raimi is back, as is Tobey Maguire along with much of the principal cast, and together they've managed to demonstrate what few sequels do -- that (go figure) practice can actually make for improvements. Smart yet not cerebral, kinetically gifted without being flamboyant, Raimi was always the right man for this comic-book job. But he's even better on the second go-round. The aerial sequences -- our acrobatic arachnid swinging from his filaments across the Manhattan skyscape -- are wider in frame and more exhilarating in feel. In too many of these flicks, the action is frenetic and over-long and has the ironic effect of slowing down the picture. But Raimi knows when to call "cut." He's got all the latest CGI toys in his play-box, but handles them efficiently, with clean dispatch. Where lesser directors think a huge budget is an excuse to crank out run-on sentences, his cinematic grammar is crisp, clear and unafraid to employ that most useful of punctuation marks -- the full stop.

Also, unlike Ang Lee in The Hulk, Raimi doesn't make the mistake of over-thinking the flimsy psychology of the genre. All this conflicted-hero stuff isn't meant to be profound; instead, it's there for the same reason as everything else -- to give the action (the interior action in this case) a healthy shot of pop energy. Raimi walks that line perfectly, neither downgrading the conflicts into mere camp or inflating them into faux Nietzsche. This Spidey ain't heavy, this Spidey ain't light -- this Spidey weighs in just right.

He is pooped, though. Two years have passed since his metamorphosis, and constantly battling the evildoers has taken its toll. Perpetually broke, chronically tired, falling behind in his college classes, unable to make the rent on his dingy apartment, a beleaguered Peter is deeply entangled in the web of his crime-fighting duties. Ah, the stress of superheroism -- saving others has left him no time to nurture himself. Meanwhile, old flame Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) has blossomed into a celebrated actress, currently starring in an off-Broadway production of The Importance of Being Earnest (nice touch -- another comic tale of confused identities). What's worse, tired of waiting for her tardy prince, she's accepted a marriage proposal from a more conventional titan, your garden-variety astronaut. And if that weren't bad enough, Spidey is suffering from an occasional bout of filamentary impotence -- with annoying frequency, and at the most embarrassing moments, his squirter isn't squirting.

Add it all up, and who can blame Peter for denying his saviour. Which he does -- briefly, at least until the villain du jour pays him a moral wake-up call. In the interim, Maguire is a continuing pleasure to watch. Physically, he's an ideal fit for this bisected role, because the camera can't decide who he is either -- in all his films, it wavers between making him leading-man handsome in one shot, forgettably mundane in the next. More important, his modest acting style -- he's a supremely talented minimalist -- meshes nicely with Raimi's understated direction, especially in fleshing out the comic-book psychology. Maguire brings to the self-doubting scenes his peculiar brand of spaced-out mooniness and, consequently, finds the same balance as the picture -- neither too frivolous (we still feel his pain) nor too intense (he leaves the brooding quota to James Franco in his recurring gig as the poor little rich boy).

But back to today's villain, and to Alfred Molina in another neat balancing act. On the nefarious surface of things, Dr. Otto Octavius is just one more mad scientist done in by his ungoverned hubris and a misguided test tube. This time, the ill-fated experiment has left him with four huge steel tentacles welded to his body and waving about like the lethal flailings of a demented octopus. Or that's the idea. But since we're talking about Alfred Molina's body here, the idea could have easily degenerated into a laughable reality -- think fat man trailing a quartet of Slinky toys. That it never does, that his villain truly elevates the piece, is an everlasting tribute to Molina's verve -- somehow, the guy suspends both his considerable anatomy and our looming disbelief. And credit Raimi with his own dexterity, with a creative bit of spot-welding that grafts some impressively high-tech effects onto an essentially low-tech monster.

Over all, among the ranks of comic-book men with cinematic breeding, Spidey 2 lacks the mythic power of the first Super or the operatic grandeur of the original Bat. Yet it has something they don't: a pop modesty that not only becomes a pop hero but also -- and this really takes super-power -- might even sustain a pop franchise. Typically, in the vast machine that is Hollywood, attractive modesty and summer blockbuster are never put in the same cycle. But, hey, happy accidents sometimes happen -- just look what's come out in the wash.