This was disappointing (Spoilers galore)

Rating: 6/10 (3 May 2007)

I went into Spiderman 3 wanting to love it. I loved Spiderman and I loved Spiderman 2 even more. The problem with Spiderman 3 was that they tried too hard to fit too many stories into the one film, tried too hard to take what was great about the first (the awesome action and special effects and the cool concept of a 'nerdy' guy that suddenly gets powers and has to struggle with what he does about it) and what was great about the second (the interesting character exploration of Spiderman - something very very rare in comic book films) and make it work in this film - but unfortunately, it failed to deliver either.
Peter Parker/Spiderman starts out by being the guy he was before he became Spiderman - kind of goofy and clumsy and adoring(in a very annoying way) and then suddenly become arrogant and smug... then some goo comes down from outer space and he's suddenly a bloody thirsty jazz piano playing jerk? It would have worked together if Maguire was a more believable jerk, but ended up looking more like the lead singer of AFI.
The special effects were pretty tame in comparison to the first and second film and the camera angles were often clumsy and annoying.
The plot was poorly paced, with the writers flimsily piecing together elements from the comic book without helping us understand any of them. The holes in the symbiote plot line were gaping - for example, if the symbiote simply replicates or exaggerates characteristics of the host - how come Venom/Eddie Brock took on characters of Spiderman? Shouldn't he have taken on the characteristics of Eddie Brock? The way Sandman got his powers was also a little ridiculous (he falls into some machine that is left WIDE OPEN in the woods and suddenly is 'demolecularised' to become sand?). Generally, I can suspend a lot of belief but that really pushed it for me.
The most disappointing part of the film was the resolution of the conflict existing between Harry Osbourne and Spider-man. This plot line has been developing for two films and very little of the film focused on it. Harry Osbourne's amnesia seemed to be a lazy plot device to move the film along until suddenly Harry remembers, turns bad and tried to kill Peter again (but not before destroying his relationship with MJ). Then suddenly his butler decides to tell him that Peter didn't kill his father, and everything was okay again. Oh, and now he's dead. This was the most interesting part of the first two films and this movie failed to deliver a good resolution.
There were some humorous moments but overall this film did not live up to its' potential. They should have focused more on resolving the tension between Harry and Peter and perhaps introduced the idea of Venom for the next movie. None of the villains in the film had much depth and were of little interest to me.