Grade: B+

Verdict: Spidey spins an even more captivating web.

By STEVE MURRAY
Cox News Service

When it swung onto screens two summers ago, director Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" earned movie-geek rapture and more than $800 million at the global box office.

Was it that good? Well, pretty much. Raimi respected the material, delivering a comic-book adaptation that captured the pop zing of Stan Lee's 1960s creation. It took seriously Peter Parker's split persona (public dweeb, secret superhero), his yearning for Mary Jane and his guilt that, despite his powers, he only seemed to endanger the people he most wanted to protect.

Oh, and the movie featured an upside-down kiss that won instant membership in Hollywood's Smackeroo Hall of Fame.

So how can "Spider-Man 2" live up to the first one? By being just as good and in some ways even better, with improved special effects and a complex, scarier villain.

This is a sequel in a true sense, picking up from and building on the original.

We meet Peter (Tobey Maguire) badly juggling his college course load, a part-time job delivering pizza and a freelance gig shooting photos for the Daily Bugle. His grades are shaky. His pie deliveries run late. And Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) is peeved that Peter no longer hands over exclusive snaps of himself -- or, rather, his alter-ego, Spider-Man.

The truth is, Jameson's paper has turned New Yorkers against Spider-Man, painting him as a masked menace. So Peter, succeeding neither as hero nor human being, is taking a beating from all fronts. His boss at the pizza joint says, "You're a nice guy, but you're just not dependable."

Now acting on Broadway, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) has the same complaint. She's ticked off that Peter hasn't made it to her show -- unaware that en route to her performance he was forced into Spidey action by a runaway thug, then stonewalled by a stuffy usher (Raimi vet Bruce Campbell).

No longer dating Peter's best pal Harry Osborn (James Franco), MJ is giving Peter one last chance to declare his true feelings. But he balks, afraid to put her in harm's way.

While the first movie playfully equated Peter's web-shooting with burgeoning teen hormones, the sequel offers another canny parallel: performance anxiety and impotence. Yep, faced with a deepening crisis over his secret identity, Peter starts shooting blanks, plummeting webless to the pavement. (After one tumble there's a clever in-joke about Maguire's bad back, a condition that almost sidelined him from making the new movie.)

The loss of his powers comes at a bad time. The city has a new threat in someone who starts off as Peter's new friend: Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina). Financed by Harry's corporation, he's building a fusion reactor. To manipulate the device, he's also invented four enormous robotic arms, each possessing artificial intelligence, fused to his spine.

Things go horribly wrong, sending "Doc Ock" out on a rampage, mentally controlled by the tentacles' computer brains. (He resembles a mechanical version of a multiple-limbed H.P. Lovecraft monster.) His plans to build a larger, deadlier reactor intersect with Harry's need to unmask Spider-Man, whom he believes killed his father (Willem Dafoe, making a cameo here) in cold blood.

Working from a script by Alvin Sargent, with input from others including novelist Michael Chabon ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay"), Raimi takes time to deepen the characters. The movie not only continues the story but sets up the next sequel. Humanizing Doc Ock by introducing us to his wife (Donna Murphy), the film also gives more time to Peter's widowed Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), her life now complicated by loneliness, financial woes and Peter's confession of guilt over his uncle's death.

"Spider-Man 2" isn't perfect. Franco's Harry gets to do little more than seethe. Daniel Gillies as Jameson's son barely makes an impression. There's a "huh" scene that goes on too long, with Peter sharing an elevator ride with a stranger played by Hal Sparks. And while the computer animation is notably better, a few scenes still have that blurry, telltale CGI look.

On the other hand, most of the action set-pieces -- dizzying swings through the city, a couple of skyscraper duels between Spidey and Doc Ock, and a long tussle aboard a speeding elevated train -- are dazzling. Comic moments, like a scene in a laundromat, or the fate of Peter's old comic book collection, are sly without veering into wink-wink parody. And there's one great "reveal" near the end that has the swoony, romantic power of popcorn flicks at their best.

Maguire seems more comfortable than ever in his role, while Molina makes a memorably conflicted baddy. Dunst, though, seems to play Mary Jane on autopilot, lacking her usual spark; there's something veiled and a little slouchy in her work. But like other flaws, it doesn't slow the movie down.