"Spider-Man 3" weaves too much of everything in its web to be the fun movie it could have been.

Rating: 6/10 (2 December 2007)

The third entry in the Marvel Comics superhero saga, "Spider-Man 3" suffers from a long-winded lecture against revenge, too many villains, too much plot, and special effects so conspicuously computer generated that the ambitious action scenes look even more like a video game than those in the first two films. One minute we have writer/ director Sam Raimi and co-scripters Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent exhorting us from the celluloid soapbox of their $300 million plus movie to embrace forgiveness rather than exact revenge and that happiness boils down to making the right choices since the wrong ones will destroy you. The next minute the filmmakers regale us with high-flying, gravity-defying acrobatics between characters so indestructible that is comes as something of a surprise in the last reel when they show signs of mortality. Incredibly, Spider-Man appeals for help from his nemesis when it appears that he may be on his last legs. Between this slipshod blend of heroics and homilies, Raimi and company continue to reheat the chick flick soap opera love triangle with Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Harry Osborn that drags out everything to a tiresome 140 minutes. Happily, everybody from the previous "Spider-Man" movies reprises their roles, but several are given the short-shrift in this tedious tale.
Earlier "Spider-Man" epics wisely kept things evenly matched; the heroic webslinger never battled more than one enemy. Unfortunately, "Spider-Man 3" makes the same mistake that those overblown "Batman" sequels committed when they pitted the Caped Crusader against tag-team adversaries. The "Batman" movies suffered because they wasted lots of valuable time establishing colorful bad guys who never stood a chance against the hero. Similarly, "Spider-Man 3" suffers, too, because his opponents here aren't especially memorable. Not only does Spider-Man tangle again with Harry Osborn as the new Green Goblin, but also he has to deal with the shape-shifting Sandman as well as another evildoer named Venom who resembles Spider-Man, except for his pointed little teeth.
As "Spider-Man 3" opens, our hero (Tobey Maguire) basks in the limelight of public affection. New York City officials have finally decided to honor Spidey for his many good deeds and the Big Apple presents him with its key to the city. Predictably, not long afterward, events change for the worst, and Mary Jane Watson (Kristen Durst of "Elizabethtown") emerges as the first casualty. Broadway theater critics ridicule her stage debut as a diva, and she loses the lead in the show. Our poor heroine has to stoop to taking an ignoble day job warbling in a jazz bar when she isn't waiting on customers. It doesn't help matters that her boyfriend Peter Parker's alter-ego Spider-Man overshadows her. Moreover, her eyes turn green with jealousy when he puckers up during the key ceremony in classic Spidey fashion with the latest damsel, collegiate classmate Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), another character from the comic book series, that he has saved from disaster. Meanwhile, Harry (James Franco of "Flyboys") still wants Spider-Man to pay for killing his father.
Were Peter and Harry's feud not enough, "Spider-Man 3" antes up another villain, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church of "Sideways"), the misunderstood miscreant who really murdered Peter's Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) in the first movie. Miraculously, Marko manages to escape from prison, but he has the misfortune to stumble into a mammoth science project where he is transformed into the Sandman. The villainous Sandman behaves like an irradiated character from a hokey 1950s' sci-fi/horror epic. He has the power to transform himself into a towering giant on the scale of Godzilla. At the same time, Peter faces new competition from another shutter-bug, wiseacre Eddie Brock (Topper Grace of "Traffic"), who aims to replace him at The Daily Bugle as Spider-Man's exclusive photographer. Just when you're beginning to suffer from sensory overload, Raimi and company toss in a mysterious meteor oozing with symbiote, an inky black, gooey alien substance which brings out the evil in humanity. This slimy stuff attaches itself to Peter and preys on his baser instincts. Suddenly, Spidey appears at crime scenes decked out in an all-black outfit. Anybody who has seen the "Star Wars" movies knows that Peter has gone over to the Dark Side. Eventually, in keeping with the film's heavy-handed message, Spider-Man learns that giving into evil is not the right choice.
Sadly, "Spider-Man 3" never achieves the right mix of morality and melodrama. Indeed, Raimi, his brother Ivan, and Oscar winning scenarist Alvin Sargent deserve good citizenship accolades for advocating forgiveness over revenge, but they should have saved their sermon for another movie about realistic characters instead of shallow-minded superheroes. Things get so woebegone in "Spider-Man 3" that after he whips one villain, Spidey accepts the polecat's apology and lets him take off for parts unknown. Credibility should be the last factor to interfere with a superhero movie, but "Spider-Man 3" treats its characters inconsistently. Spider-Man and Harry spend the first half of the movie surviving some pretty incredible things. In the second half, however, Raimi and company ask us to worry about these characters as if they were mortals despite their earlier death-defying feats. If there must be a "Spider-Man 4," Hollywood needs to make a quantum leap in computer-generated technology and Raimi needs to remember that summer movies should deliver excitement, intrigue, and adventure, not preach about moral issues. "Spider-Man 3" weaves too much of everything in its web to be the fun movie it could have been.