Following Batman's decline apparently

Rating: 1/10 (8 May 2007)

I have to tell you I am a sci-fi geek and a comic book geek. Its pretty hard to ruin one of these movies, and yet this one was ridiculously gluttonous and completely left the Spiderman formula, that was working, behind.
Let me start with the positive. The special effects were top rate. When you compare the special effects from Spidey 3 to Spidey 1 there is quite a leap. Sandman was just incredible to watch when he was on screen, though note to directors, lets chill on the Thomas Haden Church close ups, I wanted to hand him some lip balm and face moisturizer! Venom was a little more cartoony, where Sandman was just visually cool. So the special effects team, top marks.
As for the movie itself, look its 140 minutes I will never have back. Peter Parker sings and dances in a jazz club for crying out loud. We have to endure Kirsten Dunst singing. We have to endure the introduction and set up of Flint Marko (Sandman, Eddie Brock (Venom), and Gwen Stacy. The only one I felt was handled appropriately was Gwen Stacy, and thats only because she was a lesser character therefore she didn't really require as much. And and the vengeful Harry Osborne (New Green Goblin?)into the mix and you have a movie that is very reminiscent of the god awful "Batman and Robin" with all those cast of characters they seemed to try to ram down your throat. ENOUGH.
As a result of this decision to inundate us with new characters, and still try to intertwine the troubled love story between Peter and MJ (I just don't care about by the way), the movie over reached. It couldn't pull it all together. What is needed is to go back to the one villain format with the angst of life on this. We attach ourselves to the problems of Peter's personal life. But you can't properly take care of that aspect with an interesting angle on his personal life AND properly take care of the real thing everyone came to see. Spiderman fighting the bad guy.