Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (4 May 2007)

I can't help but think that if it weren't for the legions of Venom fans devastated over his lack of screen time that this movie would have at least been well liked for it's entertainment value.
The tragedy of Spider-man 3 is the knowledge of what could have been. The story goes that this film's screenplay was originally intended to span two films with Ben Kingsley already lined up to play the Vulture who would have been the primary villain of the first film. One would then assume that Parker wouldn't have ditched his black suit until the finale, saving Venom to be the main contender of the follow up. This is what should have been done. Venom is a very cool character for many more reasons than his appearance, but his screen time is kept so short here that nobody outside of the comic fans know it. Comic fans are sad he's not in it more...everyone else wonders why he was in it at all. Because of the hodgepodge of activity crammed into the story he's reduced to a two dimensional character who is ultimately defeated too fast to promote any real threat.
But like I said, in spite of it's faults this is a very entertaining movie and given the volume of material Raimi and his team had to juggle with they did a remarkable job of presenting it. There's a ton of action, lots of humor and amazing special effects. The plot of course does not live up to the standards of the first two and that is it's main downfall...but to be fair the first two set the bar fairly high. This franchise isn't dead though and I imagine everyone's learned from their mistakes, I can't wait for number 4.
If you like fun action movies this is a fun ride. Watch it with an open mind...just because it fell short of it's potential doesn't mean it's a bad movie.