Success not wholly deserved

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2007)

"Spider-Man 3" not only exceeded the performance of the previous two movies; it set a new world record for an opening weekend, netting an amazing $375M globally. I was one of the many who was there on the first weekend and the opening applause in my central London cinema was a clear indication of the super-hero's enduring popularity. Yet, although Columbia Pictures has spun its web and pulled in many punters, the success is not wholly deserved.
As always, there are some superb special effects, as there should be with a budget of $250M. I particularly enjoyed the creation if the Sandman character, although it was a pity that the subtlety of his features was lost as he became bigger and uglier. However, the black stuff that turns Spider-Man evil looks pathetic and its arrival on earth through a meteor is so lame.
Sam Raimi is the director for the third time which provides continuity of style and narrative but, for the first time, he is involved in the storyline and the script and here the movie is sadly lacking. There are too many villains, too much romancing, and not enough genuine drama. The final scene especially is really weak - and the whole thing is about 20 minutes too long.
Where the third movie does score is with some genuinely funny moments, such as J.K. Simmons performance as newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson, Bruce Campbell as a restaurant's maître d', and Tobey Maguire giving a swaggering show like a John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever", but basically we want our super-heroes to deliver thrills more than humour and I knew this wasn't working when I found that the black-suited Spider-Man was attracting me more than the original incarnation of the arthropod.