SPIDER-MAN, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can - comes back with a spanking great sequel and tops its original box office figures, that's what.

Setting down a masterplan for superhero adaptations once again, it wisely uses its leading everyman Tobey Maguire to provide an audience with a big fat slice of intelligent and entertaining cinema.

Focusing on the loneliness of the high-flying web-crawler, it shows us poor Peter Parker's (Maguire) struggle to hold down a pizza job, attract the attention of his editor at the Bugle, J Jonah Jameson (J K Simmons), and tell Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) that he won't convert their friendship into a relationship because he fears for her safety.

Add to that growing pressure from Harry Osborn, who's working on a multi-million-dollar deal with the brilliant Dr Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), the fact that he's failing university and his Aunt May is about to be evicted, and you'd be right in assuming it's not going Peter's way.

Returning director Sam Raimi has taken his inspiration for this instalment from a Marvel comic entitled Spider-Man No More and, indeed, all these public and private frustrations cause him to lose his powers and dump his suit in a bin.

But then Dr Otto's diffusion reaction project (a big ball of scary, fiery stuff) goes tragically wrong and turns him into a many-armed maniac, leaving Peter with a very difficult decision indeed.

Right from the cracking illustrated opening credits, this is the blockbuster that has everything, including fairly smooth and minimally-applied CG effects, plus super cinematography from Matrix stalwart Bill Pope, all of which add an exciting dimension to the superior stunt work.

There's sunshine with Simmons' wonderfully-expanded comic role - "A guy named Otto Octavius ends up with eight arms. What are the odds?" - and light-hearted sequences such as when the Spidey suit dyes Peter's whites or he skips along the street to Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.

He even remarks on the difficulties of his outfit in a great elevator moment - "It gets kinda itchy and rides up in the crotch a little too" - under-cutting how overblown this whole lark could become.

And finally Spidey has a worthy combatant. Molina does a great job, monstrous but empathetically tortured in a way that Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin never got close to.

In fact, the only note of concern is the PG rating, given that one particular operating room sequence nearly had me peeing in my popcorn.

Real stars of the show are the animatronic/puppet arms of Doc Oc, which are like snakey, hissy extra bad guys.

With the inclusion of a few potential nemeses for the next movie (Jameson's son being the guy who turns into Man-Wolf), this could (hopefully) run and run.