Should have been called Mary Jane Loves Peter Parker

Rating: 4/10 (6 May 2007)

The Romantic angle of Spiderman throughout its existence in comics, TV and Film has been an intricate part of its story lines. However it is a secondary part. In the third installment of the franchise Raimi fails to live up to the expectations set by his previous 2 forays into the Marvel Universe of Spiderman. In this third installment he spends too much time focusing on the romantic trials and tribulations of Peter and MJ, and too little time developing meaningful characters or entertaining story lines.
In Spiderman he broke new ground, and set the franchise up to be the go-to summer blockbuster for fans of both the super hero and action genre. In Spiderman 2 he raised the bar, combining incredible action with story lines that were sure to please discerning film aficionados, and comic book fans alike. Balancing perfectly The Romantic story lines, with the dramatic ones, and interweaving them brilliantly with the action sequences that we expected.
In the third installment perhaps he became a victim of the success of the first two. In this film he tries to do too much, too many characters, too many villains, getting too little screen time, and far too much teenage "romantic angst" combined with far too little Spiderman for a film bearing the title Spiderman. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, far too many song and dance numbers for a film not titled Chicago!
In addition, in a move that, much like the first 2 films, I am certain was spurred by the egos of the films stars, Spiderman takes every chance he gets to remove his mask, or at least half of it. How everyone in New York does not know that Peter Parker is Spiderman I do not know. (I guess if they can not figure out that Clarke Kent is Superman it is feasible that they would not figure this out either). Two weeks ago I would have said that Tobey Maguire was Spiderman, and losing him would hurt the franchise, however after this installment, losing all of the big three (calling Dunst one of the big three gives me a bit of a pain, but...) would probably not hurt my feelings at all.
Of course as with most films, not everything is bad, even though there is not nearly enough Spiderman for my liking, the action sequences that this film does contain are spectacular, if somewhat disconnected from the film, and if the film were under 100 min the amount of action in this "action film" would probably have been adequate, however for a film with a running time pushing two and a half hours Spiderman 3 was seriously lacking in action for stretches that seemed to drag on for an eternity while we suffer through the twist scene.
The Good News is, this movie will make a fortune, so this very bad installment will not sink the Franchise, however the bad news is, this movie will make a fortune, and therefore the mistakes that were made may go unnoticed by the film maker.