REVIEWED - SPIDER-MAN 2: Spider-Man 2 is an action-packed blockbuster with humour and a generous heart, writes Michael Dwyer
With Arnold Schwarzenegger playing governor in California, and Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis ignominiously consigned to the video store shelves, our 21st-century screen heroes are slighter of frame, devoid of chiselled jaws and bulging biceps, and altogether more introspective and complicated than their predecessors. Some of them even wear glasses.
The stars of this year's biggest box-office hits epitomise the new breed of skinnier, emotionally conflicted screen hero - Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Jake Gyllenhaal in The Day After Tomorrow, Jim Caviezal in The Passion of the Christ, Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and now Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2.
Two years on from his first outing, Maguire's agile, web-slinging superhero laudably continues to save Manhattan from the forces of evil. But it's all getting too much for his alter ego, Peter Parker, who has to carry this burden of responsibility on his slim shoulders - and cope with the consequences in his increasingly messy personal life.
Peter is missing classes at Columbia University, behind in the rent for his shoebox apartment, losing his part-time job delivering pizzas, getting bawled out by the brusque Daily Bugle editor for not supplying the photographs he wants, and consistently letting down the love of his life, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), now a successful model and actress appearing in perfume ads and in a theatre revival of The Importance of Being Earnest.
The movie only offers a brief snatch from that production, as Oscar Wilde's dialogue reflects on people leading double lives - an apt reference point for Peter Parker as he struggles with his identity crisis. However, angst seems to be consuming every other key character in the movie, too.
Mary Jane, distressed by Peter's unreliability, is drawn towards a young astronaut with his feet firmly on the ground. Peter's best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), has the distemper of a modern-day Hamlet, brooding over the death of his father in the first film and swearing revenge on Spider-Man, whom he blames. And Peter's Aunt May (the splendid Rosemary Harris), who was widowed in the earlier film, can't keep up with her mortgage repayments and is threatened with losing her home.
Enter Dr Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a benign and brilliant scientist who's happily married and encourages Peter to read poetry - until, in a time-honoured movie device, an ambitious experiment goes disastrously wrong. Deranged, he is transformed into Doc Ock, a raging, multi-tentacled agent of destruction.
The screenplay for Spider-Man 2 is the work of Alvin Sargent, an Oscar winner for his portrait of an emotionally troubled young man in Ordinary People. The writers credited with the storyline include novelist Michael Chabon, the author of Wonder Boys, filmed four years ago with Tobey Maguire as a writing student, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, which dealt with the creation of a comic book superhero.
So, while Spider-Man 2 is more grounded, so to speak, than its predecessor, director Sam Raimi does not stint on the action set-pieces, and the movie delivers in spades in his last half-hour, beginning with a terrific runaway train sequence and then satisfyingly resolving all the tangled narrative strands before leaving the door wide open for a second sequel.
