Clever screenplay  do not forget that this is comic book stuff after all

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2007)

I have heard criticisms about the script of this movie being incoherent, juvenile, preaching, unconvincing, and so on. But things should be put in proper perspective: we must not lose sight of the fact that this is an adaptation from a comic book, not Shakespeare.
The assertion in my summary line rests mainly on the handling of the villains because after everything has been said and done about the "human stories", a comic book yarn is really about pitching heroes against villains. The latter, we have three-and-a-half here. There is good old Goblin in a new guise, his son Harry played capably by superbly handsome James Franco (never understand why MJ didn't choose him). There is Sandman (a very different Thomas Haden Church from the one you love in "Sideways") who is in essence a disembodied spirit that materializes out of a pile of sand, into beings of all shapes and sizes, ordinary and grotesque, and dematerializes with equal ease and grace. The mind-boggling special effect here alone is almost worth your admission. Then there is the creepy crawling thing that reminds me of the good old days when we had something called cassette tapes, when the worst frustration is to have it jammed in a cassette player, coming out in a hopelessly entangled mess of black ribbons. Now this alien substance manifests itself in two human forms, the ultimate villain Venom (Peter Parker's rival photographer played by Topher Grace) and in one half of Spiderman, the evil half which had hitherto been hidden (sort of Freud's id). The cleverness of the script is in handling the interaction of these villains, among themselves and with the hero. While you will surely see it coming, the culminating two-on-two duel is still fantastic.
As I mentioned, there are "human stories" in abundance, but these are not what I buy my admission ticket for. If they turn out fine, I am happy, but not elated. If they are banal cliché, I am forgiving. After all, I don't look for GCI in "The painted veil" or even "Miss Potter".
The only other thing I'll mention, in addition to the completely satisfactory special effects, is the delightful supporting cast, even in a cameo nature, particularly the father-daughter pair: beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard (M. Night Shyamalan's delightful discover) and James Cromwell who appears in just about very other movie you see, but most memorable lately as Prince Philip.