My eyes hurt

Rating: 4/10 (10 July 2007)

I liked the first Spider-Man movie a lot. I liked the second somewhat less, but i still liked it a lot as well. Few movies have managed to capture the comic book-adventure feeling in quite the same way. The two first movies managed to be dramatic and funny at the same time, while still managing to get the best out of the comic.
This however is something else completely. I wonder who at the studio made the decision to replace everything in the movie with a special effect? Where there used to be comedy, there are no special effects. Where there used to be action, there are now special effects. It's ridiculous to even call it special effects since there is probably hardly a single frame in this movie that is not edited with CGI. And trust me, i have nothing inherently against CGI, i only dislike it when it becomes a substitute for real film-making. And it does here.
First of all a good villain is missing. A lot of the quality from the first two movies were Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina. Both were great villains in their own way, although Dafoe had more fun themes to work with. Here we have a man made of sand that makes you more sad than anything, and an "evil" Spider-man which definitely makes me sad. While Haden-Church does the best he can with Sandman, the character is just not a lot of fun. He's more the tragic kind of villain. He has my sympathies, but he won't carry the movie on his own. Topher Grace in the sort of villain/asshole part is also OK, but again he doesn't have a lot of fun material to work with.
Besides missing a proper villain though, this movie has one major flaw and that is the effects. While they are probably technically very well done, they look expensive anyway, they are difficult to look at. At least for me it felt many times as though i was watching an animated roller-coaster. People were flying through the air, punching each other and my eyes started watering after a while. First of all, it's too exhausting to watch - especially for an effects-packed 140 minutes, and second it's not very well done despite the technical qualities. After all, i want to be able to see what's going on, now it was just things buzzing in front of my eyes. It hurt after about 80 minutes. After 140 minutes i was ready to throw away my lenses.
The third point that bothered me was the running time. Like i said above, 140 minutes is steep for something this action- and effects-packed. And besides that the movie really doesn't have the script nor the story for this kind of marathon-like running time. I was desperately bored by the end of the movie, and felt for a while it was the worst thing i'd seen in the theater for a long time. Of course, it wasn't that bad, but painfully slow endings will destroy even the best movie experiences.
In the end this isn't a disaster of an experience. I can't say i enjoyed this movie though. It was a mix between high expectations from the first two installments, and a general disappointment in the fact that an obviously huge budget has given such sloppy and hysterical special effects. I want more than this from Spider-Man. This just won't cut it. I rate it 4/10.