E-Mail This Article to a Friend No web gem Spider-Man 2 spins few marvels BY PETER KEOUGH
	Spider-Man 2 Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Michael Chabon. With Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, and Rosemary Harris. A Columbia Pictures release (127 minutes). At the Boston Common, the Fenway, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle/Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

The catch phrase for the first Spider-Man was "With great power comes great responsibility." For the sequel, it’s something along the lines of "You have a choice." I don’t have much power in the matter, but I feel it’s my responsibility to suggest that the best choice is to hold out for the DVD rather than shell out 10 bucks for this cornball, half-hearted, fitfully exciting rehash.

Maybe Aunt May (no fault of Rosemary Harris) is the problem. When I read Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man back in the ’60s, she really bugged me. A co-dependent, passive-aggressive, castrating biddy, she underscored the whole namby-pamby finger wagging that thwarted what could have been a trenchant, even subversive embodiment of adolescent angst. Maybe that’s why Spider-Man 2 springs to life late in the game when director Sam Raimi invokes some of the wickedness of The Evil Dead and turns Aunt May into a human shuttlecock batted between her super-powered nephew and his new nemesis.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s lots of slogging before any fun begins. Poor Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), trying to balance careers as a college student and a costumed crimefighter, finds he can’t make ends meet delivering pizza (that despite employing his web-slinging powers trying to get a delivery in under the company’s guaranteed time limit). Instead of empowering himself or fulfilling his responsibilities, all he gets is failing grades, cold pizza, and the cold shoulder from those he disappoints. Worst of all, he can’t settle down with his true love, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), because to do so he would have to reveal to her his secret identity as Spider-Man and so put her in danger from his "enemies." Which doesn’t make much sense when you think about it (would she be in any less danger if she didn’t know who he was?) but as an excuse for avoiding commitment is one of the better ones.

So this is where the choice comes in: Peter decides not to be Spider-Man anymore. We know how long that’s going to last — as if Sony were going to pay $200 million to make a film about a kid studying physics. There’s no escape for Spider-Man, for the world of this movie is as incestuous and interwoven as the Habsburg Dynasty, with super-villains popping out from one’s nearest and dearest, usually by means of an overreaching scientific experiment gone awry.

In this case, it’s Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), Peter’s role model/father substitute. He’s also the top asset for OsCorp, the energy company of Parker’s pal Harry Osborn (James Franco), formerly owned by Harry’s late dad, Norman (Willem Dafoe), a/k/a the Green Goblin from the previous film (OsCorp, I believe, is currently a subsidiary of Halliburton). A brilliant, idealistic guy, Octavius believes he has perfected a "fusion" process that will provide perpetual energy. When he pulls the switch, though, all he manages to do is kill his wife, become a monomaniacal evildoer, and fuse himself to the four vastly powerful mechanical arms he requires for the experiment.

As Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, the best thing in the movie) puts it, "A guy named Octavius ends up with eight limbs — what are the odds of that?" About the same as the likelihood that the newly monikered "Dr. Octopus" or "Doc Ock" will follow in the tradition of the Green Goblin (not to mention The Lord of the Rings’ Gollum) and spend a lot of time talking to himself. Or, rather, talking to his arms, which hover like Satanic serpents entranced by lines that would make George Lucas cringe. No doubt Raimi was amused by the Freudian implications of all this, and when Spidey’s ejaculatory web shooters fail him in key moments, you might conclude that what he really needs is a prescription for Viagra.

What Spider-Man 2 needs is a Sam Fuller type of innocence that can take the hokum seriously and transform it into pulp purity. Raimi comes closest to this sensibility with his visuals, which evoke the bold compositions and brutish chiaroscuro of Steve Ditko’s artwork from the comic book, juxtaposing extreme long shots, in which antlike figures crawl in abstract urban landscapes, with extreme close-ups, in which kabuki-like faces pop the frame. A runaway El-train sequence marks this approach at its best; I had tears in my eyes at the end. Or maybe the film needs more of Raimi’s own sardonic irreverence. If it were my choice, I’d rather watch Aunt May get bounced around than listen to her scolding.