Somebody Else's Nimrod

Spiderman 2

I don't agree with Roger Ebert that Spiderman 2 is the best comic book movie ever, but it is very good. Like last summer's X2, like the Buffy series before it, Spiderman 2 is blessed with a director who understands that the secret to a comic book movie's success isn't simply the ability to produce a whiz-bang spectacle. Sam Raimi produces plenty of spectacle, but he also seeks to convey the very real, accessible feeling that the best comic books address (express themselves though they may in the awkward idiom of the fifteen-year-old boy), the lyricism amidst the goofy costumes and over-the-top dialogue. Peter Parker is being crushed by responsibilities he never asked for, as well as guilt he at least partially earned. That's something we can all empathize with, even if we've never donned a spider-costume. Raimi, and Tobey Maguire, who may not be the finest actor in the world but brings geeky charm and gentle sympathy to Peter, make sure we don't forget it.

One of my favorite moments in the film is a quiet one: the daughter of Peter's boozy Russian landlord, a shy, gawky teenage girl named Ursula, stumbles into Peter's rathole while he's brooding and offers him some chocolate cake. He agrees, and she nervously risks further, "And a glass of milk?" This scene doesn't "go anywhere"; no romance or revelation comes from it; but it serves beautifully to connect Peter's anxieties with our own, more humble ones, to remind us that courage can be expressed by tackling mad scientists with mechanical legs, but also by daring to overcome our own insecurities and try to make a connection.

The film is also a touching paean to New York City. Comics have a special affinity for urban environments--where everything is so amazing and out-of-scale, it doesn't seem quite so ridiculous that a person could fly, or throw fire with his mind--and the odd proliferation of city buildings in their fantastic diversity is the constant backdrop for Peter's webswinging adventures. S2 handles tenderly the little hopes and dreams that the young people of the city bring to their squalid, tiny apartments. It was almost enough to make me sentimental about my own apartment (roughly the size of Peter's). There's nothing quite as unsubtle as the (apparently looped-in) dialogue of the crowd on the bridge in the first movie, but Raimi still makes it plain that the city can mock its heroes in one breath, but will embrace them in the next. The film's NYC is a place worthy of its freaks, the heroes and the villains.

The film has its share of flaws. Mary Jane, the female romantic lead, continues to scuttle as mechanically as any film cybermonster between the men in her life without actually appearing to care for any of them, and her indifference to the consequences of her own behavior rises almost to the sociopathic by the end of the film. Kirsten Dunst doesn't bring her life, but I'm not sure what any actress could have done for her as written. Fortunately, and contrary to what the voiceover at the beginning of the first movie says, the film is not about this girl. Mary Jane is always more of an idea than a person--that allows her unattractiveness not to sink the film, though it leaves the film sadly limited in other ways. There are some sequences that could have been trimmed, a few anvils that didn't need to be bounced off the viewer's brow. The desire to set up the sequel means that the film wastes a well-wrought ending in favor of what is essentially a trailer for the coming attraction. If you're fond of Raimi's early Darkman, a film ahead of its time, you may also note some recycling of shots and concepts with a raised brow (though slightly less than in the first). However, Spiderman 2 is still a film that delightfully gets it, that leaves you with hope that a genuine modern American art form need not be ghettoized forever.