In Spider-Man 2, Peter Parker has a crisis of conscience and gives up on the public. Apparently so too has director Sam Raimi. I have made it no secret that I am not some die-hard fan of the first Spider-Man, but at the very least, I admired the guy’s passion for the material. Everything passionate about the first movie is absent in Spider-Man 2, and everything that is left on screen is just plain hokey. There just isn’t another way of saying it. This is one big hokey movie!
Spider-Man 2 is comprised of several story lines, and all vary in degrees of hokey. The first is about Peter’s commitment. As his life slowly begins to crumble around him, Peter must wonder if what his Uncle said (“With great power comes great responsibility”) is as valid in reality as it is in theory. (Hokey rating: 10/10.) The traditional “villain” comes in the form of Dr. Otto Octavius, who is a brilliant scientist working for Oscorp (which is now being headed by Peter’s best friend, Harry Osborn) and on the verge of making a groundbreaking discovery in the field of energy, but of course his experiment goes wrong, and four mechanical arms are welded permanently to his spine. (Hokey rating: 5/10.) Story #3 involves Harry and his personal vendetta against Spider-Man for claiming the life of his father and his slow descent into obsession. (Hokey rating: 4/10.) Finally, Peter struggles with his feelings for Mary Jane (annoyingly called M.J.) when he knows that his relationship with her could put her at great risk. (Hokey rating: 8/10.)
As far as serious and critically acclaimed dramas go, my favorite is Ordinary People and writer Alvin Sargent won a well-deserved Academy Award for his screenplay. In a complete 360 degree turn around, he has written one of the worst screenplays I have ever suffered through with Spider-Man 2. Every comment made to Peter Parker is a double-entendre doused in a surplus of poignancy, including my favorite: “There is a hero in all of us;” there are grand proclamations up the wazoo; and to mix things up a bit, Sargent is content to throw in ghosts of dead relatives as a plot device and form of introspection. A solid 75% of what is wrong with this movie is the dialogue, which is laughably bad, and the other 25% of the problem is the story which is a concoction of every Saturday morning superhero cartoon plot (mad scientist needs fictional chemical element to complete the project he started!) warmed up and shoved down the throats of eager movie patrons. Poor Alvin must really need a paycheck to turn out work this bad and, well, hokey.
Comic relief isn‘t a bad thing. In fact, it is almost necessary in even the most bleakest of movies to keep the viewer from a self-induced coma. Yet Raimi takes this way too far, and turns Spider-Man into a downright comedy in the vein of Charlie‘s Angels, but the only difference is that at the end of the day, Spider-Man 2 still wants to be taken seriously! Cameos by VH1 mainstay Hal Sparks and cult-favorite Bruce Campbell are amusing but a poor decision and even poorly executed and of course, hokey. You know a director is sleeping through a movie when you see a strutting montage to “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and Peter Parker tripping is supposed to elicit laughs from the audience. Or maybe it is because I was too busy laughing at all the unintentional humor in Spider-Man 2 (i.e., the dialogue, Spidey crowd surfing) to really find hokey intentional humor all that amusing.
Several aspects of Spider-Man 2 had some potential, but are never fully realized. Dr. Octavius, AKA Doc Ock after the accident, is a far better baddie than Spider-Man’s Green Goblin, but when the script should be developing this character, it lingers on the half-baked redundancy of Peter’s identity issues, which subsequently turns Doc Ock into one of the most underdeveloped villains in comic-book movie history. More unrealized potential lies within the character of Harry and his obsession with killing Spider-Man. James Franco gives a great performance he isn’t given enough screen time to fully develop a character beyond that of a cliche.
The special effects of Spider-Man 2 are an improvement over those in the original. But my question is, since when did Spider-Man become Superman? I kid you not, in Spider-Man 2, Spidey stops a speeding train! If I were DC Comics, I would have filed an injunction by now! And also, I don’t care how “superhuman” you are, when you fall several stories and slam into the side of a building, you don’t get up and walk away. But apart from this, the two major battle scenes (on top of a building and on a train) are tolerable, but certainly not spectacular and ultimately unmemorable.
There are two classifications of “bad” movies. There are the movies that are so bad you can hardly sit through them, and then there are movies that are so bad they are almost good. Spider-Man belongs to the later, as I most definitely had a good time seeing this movie. (Had someone been behind my friends and I at the movies with a video camera, the proceedings could have passed for an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000!) Keep in mind though, I did say almost good, because even though you may or may not have a good time seeing the movie, the quality of the movie is unequivocally bad and...hokey.
Grade: D-
© 2004 Jacob Sproul
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