not nearly as dark as they would have you believe

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2007)

After months of being treated with snippets of trailers I can say I was very much looking forward to this movie, but left the auditoria feeling a little let down.
As a whole the film is well balanced, but being a person who grew up with spidey I was somewhat disappointed. The return of the goblin in the first act was a good touch, but after that I found myself waiting for more action and(& the dark side) as I sat watching peter fumble away with his pointless relationship with the self absorbed Mary "I'm an actress!" Jane (she does finally give it up). The sandman I found an intriguing character, with a real sympathy to his struggle to accept what he has done, and you do find yourself forgiving him. J Jonah, editor at the bugle was fantastic, injecting the film with some excellently written comedy, and "dark" Pete, strutting down the street checking out talent in a Saturday night fever stride was priceless.
The inclusion of Gwen Stacy I thought was a little underplayed and Pete's promised downfall and journey to the dark side lasted only for a short part of the film, and not nearly as much as the trailers and poster made out. Venom I felt was under-used and only had what I would consider a cameo, Truly I would have had him as the villain in spider-man 4, it was like trying to jam too many socks in the draw. It could have been nicely edited to just over an hour and forty minutes if they had done that... plus have a hook setup for another money turning sequel.
I think the cruncher was the last 15 minutes which I loved and hated. The action and effects were great, but the spidey/Venom fight wasn't nearly the "epic" battle I was expecting, plus the cringe worthy American Patriotism in the big giant flag, and comments that somehow surfaced were terrible. The British reporter was pure cheese: "what brutality",...sure was!. plus the inclusion of Sam raimi's spawn with the truly awful lines: "awesome" & "wicked cool" made me shake my head in disbelief.
At the end of day though I found that the sum of the cheese dialogue didn't outweigh the overall performance, and will(not if), go and see the 4th instalment, because let's be honest, where's there's interest, there's money, and hopefully they'll iron out the cheddar.