Spidey sex coming soon?

Somewhere around the middle of Spider-Man 2, the summer sequel to the summer hit of a few years ago, you really want to grab Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) by the scruff of the neck and just force him to plant a wet one on the lips of sweetheart Mary Jane (MJ, played by Kirsten Dunst). Just get it over with, and a lot of your angst and ambivalence about being the webbed one will, like, disappear.

But that’s always been the plight of superheroes with secret identities, at least the human ones, and Spider-Man 2 does a better job than most comic-book movies of exploring that dilemma. Director Sam Raimi (who did the first Spider-Man, as well as the classic low-budget Evil Dead trilogy) was made to direct this franchise. He’s got the comic book aesthetic down – lots of zooms, pans, dramatic framing – as well as the heart to see the human behind the mask. Unlike, say, Ang Lee’s The Hulk, Raimi keeps things emotionally down-to-earth. And Maguire’s Peter Parker has to be the geekiest superheroic alter-ego in movie history: he bumps into things constantly, misses out on the hors d’oeuvres, and, in the opening thrill-ride sequence, gets fired from his pizza delivery job because he’s two minutes late with the order (despite using every webslinging trick in the book). The only time he’s really comfortable is when he’s swinging from skyscrapers, letting out whoops of joy like an urban cowboy.

But that’s Spider-Man’s problem. He’s a reluctant hero (now, there’s a cliché) who can’t get any part of his life properly in gear. He can’t commit to MJ because his job is dangerous and could hurt her; he can’t hold down a day job and show up for his college classes because he’s out hunting criminals all night long. He’s a neurotic, overstressed, sexually repressed wreck. As are most comic-book superheroes.

Add to this a strained friendship with childhood pal Harry (James Franco), who’s bitter because Spider-Man killed his dad (The Green Goblin) and suspicious of Peter’s relationship to the masked hero. Then there’s a fateful encounter with Dr. Otto Octavius (Al Molina), who, in a botched demonstration of cold fusion, has four electronic arms rudely fused onto his body, controlling the evil side of his brain. (Don’t ask what electronic arms have to do with cold fusion; just go with the flow.) Dubbed "Dr. Octopus" by the media, Octavius decides to resurrect his experiment, even though it resulted in his wife’s death, robbing banks to fund his wayward research and terrorizing Harry, Peter and MJ to boot.

Octavius is interesting as a villain because he really isn’t one; his views are simply distorted by grief and the electronic "smart arms" that have taken over his higher brain functions. All he’s really after is scientific validation. Thus, he may seem like a redundant foil to the heroic Spider-Man. But in this sequel, character is really what counts, not the cool effects sequences (we’ll get to those in a bit).

In fact, the script (with help from Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay author and comics freak Michael Chabon) taps right into the personal issues in a way that, say, Tim Burton’s Batman series never really did.

You feel for Parker’s character, even when you just want to kick him in the pants, like when he misses MJ’s star role in a play because he’s sidetracked by a couple of marauding thugs on the way to the theater. Then he’s stopped by a meticulous usher who won’t let him in because the play’s already begun. (The usher is played by Raimi regular Bruce Campbell. It’s one of the movie’s many in-jokes, like the Chinese street musician scraping out a tuneless version of the Spider-Man theme song.)

It helps that Maguire has a goofy vulnerability that makes him seem more boyish than hero-ish. He’s conflicted, and there’s a great sequence (with Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head playing in the background) wherein Parker shucks the Spidey outfit and is suddenly resplendent in his geekhood. Of course, by wearing glasses and avoiding trouble he’s masking the true hero inside, a point made again a bit too literally by Parker’s white-haired old aunt.

Better to show than tell, as they say. And Spider-Man 2 does this with a great sequence aboard a runaway elevated train. Dr. Octavius has yanked out the emergency brakes, and the carload of passengers is headed right for the East River. Parker loses his mask in the tussle, but still straddles the front of the train, spinning webs left and right to surrounding buildings in an attempt to slow down the rocketing train. Afterward, he realizes everyone aboard now knows his true identity. But, in an act of community, the New York passengers decide to keep it a secret. I don’t know, but there seems to be some subtext there about 9/11 and normal, ordinary people doing heroic, extraordinary things.

Some will complain that this sequel has its slow moments. True, the original Spider-Man was a bit flashier, quicker-pulsed. But at least the sequel carries the story arc along, however creakily. And the Webbed One and MJ do finally manage to trade spit, though a round of Spidey sex has yet to be scheduled. Leave that for next summer, I suppose.