Go see it, tiger

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2004)

Spiderman 2 has everything a good story should have. It has the obvious swash-buckling, evil-fighting heroics, the drama of the choice between what is right and what is easy, the agony of love on the ropes, the comedy of errors of things that just can't seem to go right and a beautifully done story medium. This is by far the best told comic book movie ever made, better even than Superman (1978) and ranks among the best sequels in cinema history.
The pace is set with opening credits reminiscent of the first movie, but setting the mood for what is to come. The sequel picks up with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) trying to balance his university classes, several part-time jobs, and crime-fighting as everybody's favorite web-slinger, and still comes up short for rent. After a bad day at work he comes home to a best friend, Harry Osborn, who antagonizes him for taking pictures of the "monster" (Spiderman) who killed his father (Willem Dafoe, in the previous film), to a girl, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) who loves him, but who he can't find time to love, and to his sole remaining family member, Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), who can't pay the mortgage and is still grieving the loss of her departed husband Ben (Cliff Robertson) almost two years ago.
Oscorp, meanwhile has continued to be very successful under the leadership of Harry Osborn especially with the hiring of noted genius, Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina). After a failed experiment, the good doctor becomes possessed with recreating the experiment successfully with the help of his new additional four cybernetic arms.
The character development in this movie is outstanding. Director Sam Raimi has brought many of the personal problems of spiderman to this movie to show the anguish of a super hero and the hardship that must be borne to live up to his life's motto, "with great power comes great responsibility." The romance in the movie is right on and it is refreshing to see a hero who can't get his life straight. The action in this movie is fast-paced, but comes only to support the story of the movie and not to detract from it. The elevated car battle sequence was astonishing. Perhaps I was lost in the story, but I did not notice the computer graphic effects as being so obvious the way I did in the first movie. The handling of "Doc Ock's" tentacles was fantastic on screen.
While this movie exists as a sequel to the first movie, and excels at doing so, it also stands apart. Where the first movie was mostly spent in introduction and comic fighting, this movie has moved Spiderman into a more pensive mood, dealing with the stressful realities of crime-fighting. The entire cast is outstanding but Tobey rises far above the occasion and Ms. Harris and J.K. Simmons (as J. Jonah Jameson, chief editor of the Daily Bugle) really steal the show. Also look for a cameo appearance by Stan Lee. Go see it.