Entertaining and enjoyable...but not perfect

Rating: 9/10 (30 June 2004)

Spider-Man 2 is a very respectable follow-up to the 2002 original. The sequel stays true to its roots and even does some good foreshadowing of the third chapter. I wouldn't say it's better than the original, I'd rate the two about equally.
On the positive side, the movie looks very sleek, the CGI has been updated and polished compared to the first film and the Doc Ock effects are excellent. The movie flows well and although you don't have to have seen the original to "get" this film, it does help tremendously.
On the negative side, it seems like Raimi has rehashed a lot of ideas from the original film. Without spoiling anything, let me just comment that there are a couple of familiar "damsel in distress" scenes and a familiar feel to the ending (at least, the first part of the ending. I loved the Dafoe cameo in the latter part). While I understand that superhero movies are somewhat formulaic by nature, I was disappointed that there were so many plot similarities here.
One other comment, I also felt the Alfred Molina was a great Doc Ock, but he should have been given more screen time, I wasn't able to connect with the character as much as I thought I would.
All in all a good film, this will most certainly be one of the best of the summer and far better than the upcoming "Catwoman". If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy this. If you didn't like original, you may not want to bother with this one.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in part 3.