Tobey Maguire tangles with Alfred Molina's robot limbs in 'Spider-Man 2.' Spider-Man 2 Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, and Alfred Molina. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Alvin Sargent, based on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's comic book. Rated PG-13.

Spider-Man 2 begins with Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), having a performance failure: His web-slinging ability suddenly gives out while he's swinging from building to building, and he crash-lands on a rooftop below. This sets the tone for the entire first half of the movie, which could be called "Peter Parker Can't Win." Our hero watches helplessly as his beloved MJ Watson (Kirsten Dunst) drifts away from him and accepts a marriage proposal from another guy. His college grades slip, and his professors start to lose patience with him. His Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) has mortgage problems, and he's barely keeping himself afloat financially. An unreliable employee because of his superhero duties, he's continually getting fired from various jobs, including the one as a photographer for the Daily Bugle, although his editor Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, who provides some tasty comic business) keeps rehiring him.

When the big Hollywood version of Spider-Man came out two years ago, that cautious, conservative movie never got off the ground. Watching it, you could feel director Sam Raimi and his creative personnel freezing up under the pressure of delivering a blockbuster hit. Now comes the sequel, Spider-Man 2, and you immediately notice that Raimi's no longer gripping the steering wheel so tightly. His relaxation leads to a multitude of good things, such as more comic relief and more of the weird side of the director's visual style. It still isn't in the same class as Raimi's better films or the likes of the X-Men movies and the current Harry Potter. However, it's a marked improvement for a franchise that's getting to where it needs to be.

The early portions are where the movie's weakest. Peter suffers too many little setbacks, and the plotting is slack, as major characters disappear for long stretches. This 130-minute film needed more stringent editing. It recovers from its early stumbles, though, because it's more than just the further adventures of Spider-Man. The story is credited to guys who know their way around a comic book -- Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon and the creators of tv's Smallville, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. It advances several plotlines from the first film. Peter's best friend and Spider-Man's sworn enemy Harry Osborn (James Franco, looking much more assured here) is once again intimately involved with the goings-on, and somebody does find out about Peter Parker's secret identity without dying at the end.

The burdens of superheroism also force Peter to consider giving up crime-fighting for his own peace of mind. Even though we know Spider-Man won't stay retired, the filmmakers still treat his professional crisis seriously. Maguire doesn't indulge in any thespian pyrotechnics here, but his portrayal quietly goes into some dark waters. He plays Peter as someone who's extremely cut off from his emotions, most powerfully in a scene in which he tells Aunt May in a dry monotone about witnessing Uncle Ben's death. Subtle, chilling, and often just weird, Maguire makes this character unsettling as no other actor in Hollywood could. While he allows Peter some occasional youthful exuberance, he spends most of his screen time projecting repressed grief and deep-seated fear of intimacy underneath his opaque exterior and sotto voce line readings. No wonder MJ's maddened and intrigued by this guy. Like Maguire, Dunst has a more rewarding part here than in the original, and the chemistry the two have together is still very much in evidence. However, one senses that it's the upcoming third movie that's going to be all about the Peter-MJ relationship and that Peter's pent-up state is due for an explosion.

Of course, many people who go to Spider-Man 2 will care more about the action than about everyone's feelings, so it's good to report that the sequel improves on this front as well. The new bad guy is Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a physicist whose miscalculated attempt to solve the world's energy problems leaves him with four ultra-strong robotic arms fused to his body. Molina's understatement and suave wit are a welcome change from Willem Dafoe's hamming in the original as the Green Goblin, and "Dr. Octopus" engages in three cool fight sequences against Spider-Man that put the bad guy's extra limbs to inventive use.

The new writer is old hand Alvin Sargent, who won an Oscar back in 1980 for Ordinary People. Though he stuffs the film with too many speeches about heroism and related topics, he also includes some nice touches for the well-read crowd, drawing parallels to The Importance of Being Earnest (the play that MJ's appearing in as an actress) and having Jonah offhandedly note the irony in Octavius' name. That, however, isn't nearly as important as Sargent's realization that superheroes and supervillains are simply ordinary people on some level. His work, along with the contributions of Maguire, Raimi, and the others involved in taking the character of Spider-Man through his saga, is what gives Spider-Man 2 its share of the operatic grandeur that every comic book franchise aspires to.

You can reach Kristian Lin at kristian.lin@fwweekly.com.

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