Somebody Stop Me! no really...

Rating: 2/10 (4 May 2007)

OK, so I'm not an enormous Spiderman fan anyways, but I decided to see it anyway, because clichés aside, the first two were entertaining.
This was painful to watch.
First off, this movie suffered from the same thing that hurt X-Men 3. There's way too much going on. We have three villains. That in of itself isn't a bad thing. But there are also several sub plots involving peter and MJ, Peter and the Bugle and Peter and Gwen.
The fight sequences were fast, but very predictable.
1. Peter gets thrown into a steel beam or something 2. He does the same to (insert villain here) 3. Rinse lather, repeat.
The dancing, emo hair, pelvic thrusting scene in the middle was painful. Actually painful. I kept waiting for Jim Carey as the Mask to show up. It would have made more sense than what we got.
The villains are one dimensional. Sandman is reminiscent of Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin. The same "deep" angst over a family member with no exposition of what his daughter has. The character itself wasn't very interesting, either. He's there, he 'dies', he's there, he's good, he...apologizes? Just a little bit schmaltzy.
The new Green Goblin was just a two dimensional portrait of rage that really wasn't convincing, plus an entire sub plot in which he loses his memory and gains it back that does nothing to the story.
Venom (once he actually showed up) was really awesome and could have been so great if they had actually made this movie about him. Topher Grace was wonderful and was the only villain who I really wanted to learn more about. They really didn't introduce the symbiote well. Crash lands in a meteor, infects his suit, he takes it to a scientist who says, "Oh yes, this is a symbiote." and the story goes on.
If Venom had actually been the villain, this movie would have been good, but the director is juggling so many plot lines and devoting so much time to Romantic issues and relationship problems that it really isn't convincing as a movie.
The plot was very contrived and relied on a lot of deus ex machinas. It's like, there was no script, but it felt like they were just making it up as they filmed it.
The romantic story is the same as all the rest.
1. Peter doesn't really understand MJ 2. He makes a mistake and she second guesses their relationship 3. he saves her life and says something silly and they get back together.
Bryce Dallas Howard had a lot o potential, but was never used enough. She's playing a physicist/model and we got more of the model than the physicist. It seemed like she was either trying to dumb herself down, or didn't make her character smart enough. We get flashes of this brightness in her eyes here and there, and in other scenes, she's just fluff. It's disappointing because she's an incredible actress and could have been a really interesting character.
Overall, though, it was predictable, contrived, jumbled and unorganized.