Your story has grown tiresome

Rating: 6/10 (29 May 2007)

As Dieter of Saturday Night Live would say, "Your story has grown tiresome". That is how I feel about the Spider-Man series. How many times do we have to see the damsel in distress (Kirsten Dunst)? And as for Ms. Dunst, she has the unique ability to annoy both on and off the screen. On screen, I have never found her that attractive and there is just some thing about her that rubs me the wrong way. When her character was in danger of plummeting to a painful death, I kept hoping that she would. No such luck. Many other folks feel the same way. As for off screen, when she was interviewed about the potential for a Spider-Man 4, she said, "well, no one will come to see another one with out me and Tobey". Guess again, Kirsten, 76% of those polled could care less if you reappeared! Now, as to the movie itself, about 20-30 minutes would have been better left on the cutting room floor. No one cares about Kirsten's performance in some stupid musical (in fact, I kept trying to find the "fast forward" button on my seat). And Tobey's performance as "the bad" Spider-Man was torturous and unfunny (Tom Welling makes a much better "bad" super hero when he is affected by red Kryptonite).
As for the plot, it meanders around a lot before getting to some impressive special effects. I particularly liked the Sandman, despite the obvious logical problems (such as why is the sand solid one minute and then porous the nextbut hey, it is based on a comic book!). The Green Goblin II was pretty cool too. The other villain is somewhat of a surprise so I won't spoil it by revealing the identity of the last villain. My only problem with the villains is the writer's insistence on making them have a tragic back story that makes some of their villainy forgivable (they already did the same with Green Goblin I and Doc Ock). How about making the villain just be evil for evil's sake? So, to sum up my review, the movie is probably worth seeing on the big screen for the special effects and not much else. 6/10