Spider-Man 2 Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Fantasy Rated: PG-13 Directed by: SAM RAIMI Produced by: LAURA ZISKIN and AVI ARAD Starring: TOBEY MAGUIRE, KIRSTEN DUNST, ALFRED MOLINA Released by: Columbia Pictures In Short: Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, struggles with "the gift and the curse" of his powers, as well as a formidable new nemesis, amid gorgeous special effects.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Reality Cartoon for the PG13 Audience
By Joe Lumière

The times have caught up with the cartoons—it’s not necessarily all glory and fantasy anymore. Case in point: Spider-Man 2, where the movie is slowed down—in more ways than one—by today’s conflicts. No, we are not talking about Iraq. Your hero now is confronted with personal issues and mind games that gum up his web-slinging bravado, leaving him to choose between his supernatural path or his human side, falling in the traps of love and peer pressure. It’s that same peer pressure that in the end makes him overcome his "sickness" and gets him swinging around Gotham again, benevolently saving lives.

Spider-Man strikes a pose

The other characters are also entangled in their own mental webs. Certainly the flick would not be complete without an appearance by Norman Osborn, AKA the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), who in turn exercises pressure on his son, Harry Osborn (James Franco), to kill Spider-Man. All is well that ends well: This episode introduces Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), a conflicted bionic man who regains control of his mechanical arms and destroys his own creation (a super-fusion device that promises to generate massive amounts of clean energy for the planet), thereby saving New York.

In the plot twist for M.J. (Kirsten Dunst), she does not show up at her wedding and finally the two platonic lovers open up, but Spidey’s identity is revealed in the process. Lots of noisy action keeps you alert in between the reflective sessions. Stay tuned for the third installment in two more years.