If you listen closely to this commentary, Avi Arad & Grant Curtis never actually talk to Sam Raimi or Tobey Maguire, and Tobey & Sam never talk to Avi or Grant. You hear Tobey & Sam conversing jovially. You hear Grant and Avi interact, but it's not a four way conversation. This means that what you're hearing is actually two recorded commentaries that are merged together, the best bits were edited into one track. There's a sincere mutual appreciation thing going between the star of the show and his director. They kid with each other and are also in on jokes that make we the audience dupes, like when Sam points out where he was staying during filming of an outdoor scene (it was green screen studio shots and not on location) and when Peter talks about doing his own backflip stunt because the stuntman's jump wasn't enough like Spider-man. The meat and potatoes of this track comes more from the producers, but it's such a rare treat to get a commentary that features the star and his director. Would that it happened more often.

A superb commentary. Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are enthusiastic and funny and impart loads of anecdotes and set stories, while Avi Arad and Grant Curtis are slightly more serious, but just as enthusiastic. Great to hear Raimi so happy, listening to his Evil Dead commentaries I always got the impression he was quite a dour person, but here he's obviously enjoying himself and is clearly proud of the film.

Avi and Grant recorded their commentary separately from Sam and Tobey, which is a shame, because I'd love to hear them interact. Overall, a pretty good commentary. It's always nice to hear how enthusiastic Sam is about his work. Lots of interesting tid-bits of information sprinkled throughout.

Here's constructive criticism for anyone who is going to do a commentary about a movie. Don't talk about stuff that's not on the screen. This commentary actually often feels like these guys were not watching the film as they were talking about it. They talk about how the octopus arms were rigged up on Doc Ock at the very beginning of the commentary, like a half hour before the reveal, so by the time we get to the arms they got nothing to talk about regarding the arms. Chances are this second commentary was actually doctored and spliced together from interviews and audio for other purposes and they figured a good edit would make for interesting commentary. Doesn't work for me. Also, special effects guys don't try to be entertaining or funny for some reason. How about some discussion about practical jokes done during preproduction? Or your brush with greatness the first time you met Bruce Campbell? You're not talking about what's on the screen anyway, so you might as well make it interesting.

As the above reviewer points out this commentary is a little disjointed - it's as if it was edited down and never checked for sync. However, if your listening to this commentary while doing something else like ironing or computer work then based on the amount of information contained - it's certainly worth a listen.
A least it doesn't have huge gaps of silence like some commentaries I could mention.

I disagree about the criticisms of this commentary. It might feel a bit disjointed, but there are far worse examples of two groups of people recording separate commentaries spliced together.

For tech gurus out there, this is a must-listen-to. You've got the best of the business talking about a film with a plethora of FX work in it. They're the FX guys, and that's what they're going to be talking about. I'd rather have them talk about the Doc Ock tentacles even before they show up rather than leaving chunks of silence because they have no input regarding a scene between Tobey Maguire and JK Simmons. Fill the silence. If your FX work isn't on screen just yet, find a way to talk about it. They'll never run out of things to talk about with their work, so even if they talk about the tentacles before they show up on screen, it's not that big of a deal.