Spider-Man 2

Variety Todd McCarthy

The pleasure is doubled in Spider-Man 2. Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters.

Newsweek Sean Smith

Amazingly, it's not all the visual splendor or killer action sequences that elevate Spider-Man 2 above its predecessor and almost every superhero movie that has come before.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a real movie, full-blooded and smart, with qualities even for those who have no idea who Stan Lee is. It's a superhero movie for people who don't go to superhero movies, and for those who do, it's the one they've been yearning for.

USA Today Mike Clark

With special effects so convincing you don't even think about them, a head-case hero and a three-dimensional villain who is his equal, socko Spider-Man 2 has something for everyone.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The filmmakers smartly counter heavy drama with goofy comedy, mining a rich vein of humor in the juxtaposition of the mundane and the superheroic. Maguire and Molina excel at opposite ends of the moral spectrum, but the film is stolen once again by J.K. Simmons.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Smart, fun entertainment.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Spider-Man 2 offers one emotional or action-packed aria after another; at the end you feel like giving it a standing O.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This triumphant sequel to the hard-to-top 2002 original may be the first great comic-book movie in the age of self-help and CGI wizardry, an entertainment in which both the thrills and the therapeutic personal growth are well earned.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A masterpiece of pop filmmaking -- a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Where Peter was yee-ha giddy with the discovery of his newfound powers in the first film, he's crushed by the weight of responsibility that comes with them in its far superior successor.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Spider-Man 2 succeeds in pretty much the same way "Superman II" did -- only more so.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Forget "Raising Helen" and "The Notebook," this is the movie summer's most touching young romance.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Better than its predecessor, and also superior to most other comic-book-based movies. It has a more credible (and more frightening) villain, a more capacious and original story and a self-confidence based not only on the huge success of the first "Spider-Man" but also on Mr. Raimi's intuitive and enthusiastic grasp of the material.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It's refreshing to witness a superhero with doubts. Maguire and Dunst again display the depth of talent they bring to these roles by injecting such everydayness into larger-than-life characters.

Slate David Edelstein

It's the tone of the picture that's most striking. This is nothing less than a superhero's lament--Spidey Agonistes, a comic-book spectacle in which the primary struggles are behind the mask.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This movie, directed with precision and an appreciation for (relatively) rich character texture by Sam Raimi, remembers all the fine elements of the original film (and the comic book story). It reprises them perfectly, including wonderfully choreographed, skyscraper-hanging fights.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The cutting is so sinuous and breathtaking, the music (by Danny Elfman after too much coffee) so onrushing and the camera so penetrative of the depths and heights of midtown Manhattan at cloud level, that the illusion, despite its artificiality, works. You don't believe it but you "believe" it.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A lot of talent to lavish on a single movie, but the result is uncommonly smart for the genre, and not just smart but tremendously enjoyable.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Love, death, hope, and hatred: Spider-Man 2 has ’em all, in spades.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Raimi doesn't make the mistake of over-thinking the flimsy psychology of the genre. All this conflicted-hero stuff isn't meant to be profound; instead, it's there for the same reason as everything else -- to give the action (the interior action in this case) a healthy shot of pop energy.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A perfect blend of summer action, a big movie with a deeply personal story.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Sequels don't get much better - or smarter - than the action-, drama-, romance- and comedy-packed Spider-Man 2, which miraculously improves on the webslinger's hugely popular first screen adventure in every imaginable department.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A sequel of twisted thrills and sly surprises.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Until it develops a bad case of verbosity toward the end, it improves upon its predecessor in almost every way, delivering flashier thrills while digging deeper into its characters and adding an overlay of wit.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As played by Alfred Molina with both computer-generated and puppeteer assistance, Doc Ock grabs this film with his quartet of sinisterly serpentine mechanical arms and refuses to let go.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The rare sequel that actually improves on the original, this robust entertainment's intelligence and emotional impact belie conventional wisdom that summer movie spectaculars are by nature brainless nonsense and only a stupid snob would complain about their cynical insubstantiality.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

It’s easily the best movie of the summer so far. Sony has obviously given Raimi more freedom to run the show, and the results are very entertaining.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Molina is an actor of unusually elastic gifts, but unlike Willem Dafoe, who has only to bare his scary teeth to send us all scampering for the exits, there's no getting around the fact that Molina has the face of a kindly basset hound even when it's contorted into a deadly grimace.

Empire Dan Jolin

This summer's most satisfying, spectacle-packed movie. Like its predecessor, it offers a strong story rather than a feeble excuse to connect set-pieces.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The sequel is more exciting and surprising than the 2002 original, thanks largely to Molina's excellent acting. Only the strenuously comic scenes fall as flat as one of Spidey's leftover webs.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Raimi seems more comfortable being his outlandishly jokey, B-movie self, letting entire sequences play on the line between carefree schlock and Hollywood blockbusting.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

I also like that when Our Hero starts swinging from skyscrapers, he's not just emulating Tarzan, but is working out the Newtonian physics of action and reaction.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Although Sam Raimi's direction is generally solid (and, in some scenes, flawless), the film's middle act has instances when it seems repetitive and exposition-heavy.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

As Dr. Octopus, Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe did as the Green Goblin, but the other stars--seem happy to be giving us more of the same.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The set pieces, such as an unmasked Spider-Man trying to stop a runaway subway car, are furiously scary, and compensate for all the icky mooning and moping that Peter does whenever he's questioning his gift, which is most of the time.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Yet for all the fun the sequel provides, the series shows signs of wearing out quickly, unless characters get developed thoroughly and in unexpected ways.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

A silly comic book movie with provocative psychological overtones. Or a provocative character study with silly comic book overtones. Take your pick. Either way, it's hardly the cinematic milestone it's widely hailed as being.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Never has a blockbuster, I would guess, required so many soliloquies. What with the mournful Molina, the hazed-over Dunst, and the puffy uncertainties of Maguire, we in the audience are the only ones who still believe, without qualification, in thrill and spill.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

For a big-budget action movie Spider-Man 2 is modest and not assaultive -- it has a boring decency.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

As much as I enjoy Spidey's high-flying Cheez-Doodle swoops through the skyscraper canyons of a digitally rearranged midtown Manhattan, I get no kick from his angst, especially since in this incarnation, as opposed to the '60s comic book version, he's more innocuously depressed than defensively paranoid.