A wasted opportunity and a mess

Rating: 6/10 (26 June 2009)

Tobey Maguire returns as the spectacular Spider-Man for the third instalment of the series that sees Peter and Mary Jane having relationship trouble, Harry finalising his plans for revenge, a new super villain the Sand Man emerge from a particle physics experiment whilst a meteorite falls to earth bringing with it an Alien Symbiote that starts to have a influence on Spider-Man before finding a suitable host in Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), a disgraced Daily Bugle photographer with a grudge against Peter Parker.
Phew! Got all that? A quick read of that opening synopsis tells you all there is to know about what kind of a mess this movie is in.
Sam Raimi seems to really over egg the pudding to produce a bloated, dull, quite unspectacular follow up to the triumph that was Spider-Man 2. The film starts off well with Peter deciding to pop the question to MJ whilst Flint Marko (a criminally wasted Thomas Hayden Church) escapes from prison but finds himself turned into a sand based monster in a tragic accident. However from the big opening action sequence (a battle between Peter and Harry across the rooftops of New York), the film quickly begins to fall apart as it struggles to contain and develop all of its diverging plot lines.
And that's the main fault. There's is simply too much going on in the film. The Batman films on the 1990's strained under the weight of two super villains but this film almost breaks down by trying to include three super villains. Neither fan favourites the Sand Man or Venom are well served by the storyline at all and it's a great shame because Venom, if done right, could've really worked on film. Here, once the transformed Brock turns up 20 minutes before the film ends, it just seems a waste. Even Harry's Goblin II plot line is seriously fumbled.
There's not just the fault of the too many super villains aspect, there's also the storyline of bad Peter Parker (or should that be Emo-Peter?) which is laughably bad, horribly acted and executed, and culminates in one of the most embarrassing scenes I've witnessed in a modern blockbuster, the Jazz Club scene, what were they thinking?!? It's not all bad, they do get some things right (the first hour of the film is on par with the first two films and the introduction of Gwen and Captain Stacy is spot on and they look like they've come straight off the page) but its a case of too little too late and by the time you get to another climax with a trapped, screaming MJ (another lacklustre turn from Kirsten Dunst) you really have given up caring.
A real waste of the franchise after the highs of the second instalment, let's hope they tone down the excesses for the fourth film. 6/10