Just got back from seeing Spider-Man 2.

Loved it.

Before I get too carried away, the one-sentence plot: Doctor Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a brilliant physicist, goes mad in an attempt to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction and Spider-Man has to stop him.

Okay, so that’s really distilled down, but I don’t want to give too much away. Just trust me - it was great.

Really, I couldn’t have asked for much more. We get the same great rendering of the comic book on film that we saw in the first one, but so much more. We get [another] great villain. We get the love story between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). We get all the action we paid our money to see, the [really cool] special effects we crave, and we still get the attention to the characters that makes us actually care what happens.

The movie involves you enough that we had people in the theater clapping and cheering for the heroic parts. At the end of the movie, you just want more.

And, of course, there will be more. They left it totally open for the sequel, which I now can’t wait for. It reminds me of when I saw the first one and couldn’t wait to see this. It’s been worth the wait. I’m going to have to go home and watch the first one again now.

(Oh, and for the astute viewer, you’ll notice all of the little Sam Raimi-isms you’ve come to know and love in Sam’s films. You just can’t beat that.)