Movie Review - Spider-Man 2
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2004 / 127 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
The first “Spider-Man” took me by surprise and left me breathless. In retrospect, it does not deserve the “A+” I awarded it, but it’s still a great movie and I still love the characters and the plot and all the elements that worked so seamlessly in it. It’s a rare action movie with emotional heft, and we have far too few of those these days.
The sequel still has some of that emotional heft and it still packs a punch, but it didn’t leave me as breathless with excitement and as completely thrilled and spellbound as the first film. It’s got some wonderful moments and certain scenes of this film play better than any comic book film ever made but, overall, I’d rank it several steps lower than “Batman”, a couple steps below the “X-Men” films, and certainly a few steps beneath the original “Spider-Man” which, while not a perfect film, at least left me with the impression that it was for several months.
The plot is essentially this: Peter Parker finds that his superpowers are complicating his life to a very frustrating point. He can’t hold a steady job because he’s always got to stop a robbery or save someone from a fire or vanquish a super villain. He can’t get very close to the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) because he might risk putting her in jeopardy. And his grades in college are slipping as well. Soon, because of the enormous psychological weight of this, he finds that even his powers are suffering. This comes to him almost as a blessing, however. When Tobey Maguire tosses his Spidey suit into a trash can (don’t bitch at me, it was in the trailer) I think everyone in the audience can see where he’s coming from. Oh, and Doctor Octopus is in this too.
While I appreciate the fact that this film focuses mainly on the psychological and emotional ramifications of being a superhero, and it does prove rather refreshing, I think the film almost dwells a little too much on this. So much so that Doctor Octopus (played with a perfect balance by Alfred Molina), a fine and psychologically interesting character in his own right, becomes almost a throwaway character. He’s really little more than a device for discovering Parker’s shortcomings and examining his problems. It’s an interesting technique, but I could’ve used more of Doc Ock. He’s always been my favorite of Spider Man’s adversaries, and I was a little bummed out that he didn’t get to do more or get more screen time. He doesn’t necessarily need to rule the roost as The Joker did the first “Batman”, but a few more villainous acts would have been nice. I loved the way Molina invested the character with a sense of insanity and a sense of tragedy, and kept his emotions recognizable even as he risked going over the top. And the effects work on his tentacles is nothing short of astounding. They can rip the door off a bank safe, but they’ve also got a delicate touch that allows them to light a cigar or remove a pair of sunglasses with a subtle flair. The tentacles, in fact, are almost characters in themselves. It’s just a shame we weren’t treated to a few more scenes of this stuff.
I also loved the character of Harry Osborne, played by James Franco. Franco is getting very comfortable in this role and it’s very, very interesting to see how the personality of this character has developed since last time. There are a few too many moments of his Spider Man obsession (less would have been more here, I’m afraid) but his father’s death has definitely made Harry a more intriguing character. He’s one of the movie’s strengths, and I was surprisingly interested in his motivations and the choices he made here. He’s a great character.
So is Peter Parker, but the movie dwells a little too long on his personal problems, and does so in a rather clunky manner. This guy gets dumped on a few too many times, if you ask me. It’s melodramatic overkill. He loses a job, gets a lecture from a teacher, doesn’t have rent money…by the third time he gets stiffed while trying to grab a cocktail, I was thinking that enough was enough. If I were Pete, I think I’d kill myself. (Though the movie never really makes it clear exactly what Spider Man’s powers are, which is another fault. Yes, he can make webs and glide among buildings, but when one of his webs fails and he falls the length of a skyscraper only to get up and be perfectly fine I was a little confused. Is he invincible or what? So maybe he can’t kill himself.) The movie makes Peter’s character so frustrated that I, too, was frustrated right along with him. I mean, can’t the guy get a freakin’ break? The movie goes too far out of its way to give him a hard time and then goes a little too far out of its way to give him a nice ending (it’s not all wine and roses, don’t get me wrong…).
And, really, that was my problem with the film: overkill. There’s just a little too much of everything here. There are a few too many speeches about the nature of being a hero (I thought Cliff Robertson’s line about “great power” and “great responsibility” summed that up nicely, here the filmmakers are just beating a dead horse) and a few too many beats about the choices that we make in life. Less would definitely have been more. If the movie could’ve been a bit subtler in this regard, it would have been a lot more satisfying. The first film was subtle and mostly understated and it worked more efficiently. It also had better pacing, with every scene flowing organically to the next, unlike in this film where certain things feel shoehorned in. Oh, and there are a couple action sequences here, as well, and they are all rather stunning. The elevated train scene is very effective, and I loved the thwarted bank robbery. But it’s almost like the movie isn’t interested in those scenes. The movie is more attentive to the little moments than it is to the big scenes. It takes great care with the few action sequences it has, but even with the inclusion of those, the film seems irredeemably talky. Yes, I know, it’s nice that the film isn’t all bluster and explosions, but I would have liked a little more bluster and explosion. This is a summer action movie, after all. “Minority Report” had plenty of emotional heft and meditative dialogue and it was still packed with action. And the action climax of the film is a bit of a letdown. I won’t go into further detail, so as not to ruin it for the three of you that haven’t seen it, but it seems that something capable of causing an unlimited power source and nuclear fusion would be a little harder to get rid of (there, those of you who’ve seen the movie know what I’m talking about and the rest of you shouldn’t have a clue).
All in all, it’s a movie with some great moments of reflection and some great acting. But it could’ve used a little more oomph, a little more excitement, and a few less redundant dialogue-driven moments. It’s a little talky and a little clumsy, even if it is rather great at times. And it didn’t leave me breathless with amazement and mentally stimulated as the first “Spider-Man” did. I know the screenplay of this film has an Oscar winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner involved, but perhaps what this movie really needed was an alleged hack like David Koepp. He had a masterful sense of pacing and a real feel for the emotional without overdoing it that kept the first “Spider-Man” head and shoulders above this one, and maybe that only comes with doing as many summer movies as Koepp has, and doing most of them with the precision of a Swiss watch (as Koepp has).
