Thank God

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2006)

"Spider-man 2" is the movie the first "Spider-man" should have been. Effort has been put into correcting the mistakes from the first one, and it shows all around. For starters, the visual effects have at last become great to look at, there are still some bad moments though, but at least Spidey swinging in the air seems real this time around. Everybody except Tobey does a wonderful job, Alfred Molina and Kirsten Dunst deserve special kudos here. The first is a great villain, showing a rainbow of emotions and making his character as believable as humanly possible and Dunst, whom I never liked, grew on me, like fungi on stale bread. She saved scenes where the script was corny and considering she had to react accordingly to the vegetable that is Tobey Maguire, she was great and played her character perfectly. Tobey himself is still the same lame-ass actor, looking more retarded than not, unable to show a facial expression without looking ridiculous, and he is one lucky s.o.b. for having others saving his terribly ineffective performance. The guy just isn't Peter Parker/Spider-man, he is physically just a weird looking guy that has a weird (bad) way of acting and just didn't understand what he had to do to get into the character. He doesn't seem to be having any fun at all with his performance. Yet strangely the movie works out fine, without any real damage. Besies also having some weird editing there is of course the fact that the movie has many truly ridiculous moments when our friendly neighborhood falls from 100+ feet to the ground about three times during the movie, just stands up and goes about his business. Spider-man as a superhero is also an incredibly careless and hypocritical guy, on one side denying his love for MJ for the sake of keeping her safe if his enemies discovered his true identity, and on the other taking his mask off like he just din't give a damn if somebody saw him. But in the end everything falls into place incredibly well, nothing feels rushed and the movie ends on a truly high note. With Danny Elfman's music also used much more effectively than in the original I finally had the feeling I was watching a superhero movie. Many great scenes, mostly great acting and effects, and a solid superhero story, I feel I've become a light-weight fan of the series.