MOVIE: Spidey's good, but ....

The Movie Mob, minus Paige, took in Spiderman 2 today and there were smiles and thumbs up from all, except me, the old grump.

I'll admit this is a good movie, although I am dubious of Roger Ebert's claims that it is the best super-hero movie of all time. Still, it's a solid two hours of fun and action and a lot of romance. Krystal LOVED that! But it wasn't so mushy that AJ didn't give it five stars.

The performances of the movie belong to Rosemary Harris as Aunt May and JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. And Alfred Molina was pretty good as Doc Ock, helped immensely by state-of-the-art special effects. You REALLY got the feeling those arms were real, while wrapped up in this movie. Although, the one 'Hunh' question at the end of the movie is why the METAL tentacles don't get drawn into the big fusion ball? Cars streets away were being dragged in, but not the tentacles. Oh well, my lot in life is to be picky.

Tobey Maguire is fine as Peter Parker. My favourite Parker moment of the movie is the incongruous montage played to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." But Maguire has claimed the role as his own. I no longer think of Nicholas Hammand as the REAL Spidey/Parker. Yeah, I'm that old!

So, what's the problem, you ask? Mary Jane Watson. You know, the model-beautiful red-head who saw enough in Tiger, errr Peter Parker, in high school, to raise him above the geekdom he previously inhabited. The Lady who caught on to the Spidey duality in Petey and let him have his fling with Gwendolyn Stacey before deciding it was time for her and Spidey's alter-ego to settle down. The Model who could stop buses with her long comic-book red hair and stunning looks. The Confident to the point of being cocky, girl next door.

In the first Spiderman movie, they made her a loser from a broken family. They should have renamed the character Diddie Watson (as in Damsel In Distress). It was NOT MJ. And of course, they found an ACTRESS to play the part. And as good an actress as Kirsten Dunst is, she's neither tressed for the part nor knock out gorgeous enough for the part. She's more Plain Jane than Mary Jane.

For this movie, they lost most of the loser background for MJ, tarted up the hair a shade or two and still left her with the Damsel in Distress role. Arrrgghhhh!! Try as I might, I still see Kirsten Dunst, not Mary Jane Watson, even when she pulls out a Tiger reference late in the movie.

Go see this movie. If you're not as picky as I am, and few are, you're probably going to have a good time. Unless you've read 40 years of Spidey and know what I know. In that case, you've been warned.