"Spider-Man 2"

And it's a cheat that reflects the particular wimpiness of the movie. There's less torment than sheer late-adolescent petulance in Peter's decision to stop being Spider-Man. When Superman gave up his powers in Richard Lester's wonderful "Superman II," it was so he could love Lois Lane as a mortal. Peter's decision is ... 'cause it interferes with his course load. And Superman consciously chooses to give up his powers. Peter doesn't give up a thing. The only sacrifice he makes is to toss his Spidey costume in a trash can. How are we supposed to look at him as a hero after he walks away from a guy being mugged in an alley? Raimi frames Maguire in the forefront of this shot so we can see how badly Peter feels. (If you think he feels bad, think about that poor son of a bitch in the alley.) Christopher Reeve walked away from a bully in "Superman II," but it was only Clark Kent that the tough was picking on.

The only thing that comes together in "Spider-Man 2" are the shortcomings of Raimi, Maguire and Sargent. The script's miscalculation of Peter's decision feeds into the pedestrian quality of Raimi's direction and into Maguire's weightlessness. That's not something I would have said about him in any other movie. The thing that's been great about Maguire is the lovely lost quality he has. But here he simply does not suggest a heroic presence, not even the smart-ass daredevil quality Spidey has in the original comic books.

If Maguire seems out of place here, so does Dunst. As M.J., Dunst seems to be possessed of a held-in resentment whose source and whose target you can never quite figure out. Something in this performance reminded me of Cindy Williams' spiky performance as a prefeminist teen queen in "American Graffiti." Like her, Dunst appears to be chafing against strictures she cannot articulate. There's zero chemistry between Maguire and Dunst. You keep wondering why Peter is making himself miserable chasing after her when two other young women in the movie are much more alluring -- Elizabeth Banks with her ghost of a dirty grin, as Jameson's secretary, and Mageina Tovah as his landlord's daughter, a big-eyed beauty teetering right on the cusp between duckling and swan.

The longing and desire that should be bubbling up between Maguire and Dunst in the whole movie finally comes to the surface in the climax -- which only makes you wonder where it was for the previous two hours. (And why, oh why, when Raimi gets the two of them nestling in a spider web strung above the city, doesn't he allow them some time to canoodle?)

As before, there are lots of shots of Spider-Man swinging through the canyons of Manhattan and, as before, despite all the millions spent on the movie, they look cheap. (Spidey in particular has the unreal look of a computer-animated figure set against a backdrop into which he has not been adequately blended.) Raimi doesn't allow us time to bask in the beauty of traveling through the city that way; he's too busy whipping us close to buildings and around corners. But you can guess why he wants those shots in there. They're the only place where the movie swings.

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