Good, but... not THAT good.

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2004)

I really enjoyed Spiderman 2... but not as much as I expected to. Overall it didn't feel as well balanced as the first one. It seemed to spend overly long bludgeoning us (the audience) over the head with how horrible Tobey's life is and how he's so down on his luck and blah, blah, blah. It was just too much. It just got to the point that it wasn't authentic/genuine and it just came off as brutish (rather than artistic finesse). I think if they'd trimmed that stuff off a bit then it would've been much tighter and more enjoyable because the story wouldn't drag in places. Some elements of the story were obviously in the script ONLY to add depth to the characters - primarily the whole aspect of Aunt May losing her home, etc... That scenario may have been intended to somehow reflect Tobey's internal conflict, or buttress the effect his conflict on on us, but all it ended up doing for me was weighing down the story. Every time we had another "Aunt May scene" I would inwardly groan, sigh, and just hope it wouldn't be too excruciating. It's sad that they didn't come up with a more valid way of incorporating Aunt May this second time around. On the positive side of things though, the effects were tremendous (of course), and everyone did a fantastic job of acting. My favorite element of the Spiderman series of films is the villains - who are so fascinating because of their humanity and complex underlying motivations. Anyway, like I said earlier, I did enjoy it, but it just had too much of boring Aunt May scenes, and not enough substance on some of the other major plot point scenes. As good as the first Spiderman? Definitely not. In fact I'd say it's above the crappy Batman sequels (3 & 4), but below the rest of the comic superhero movies in quality.