Average multiplex stuff at best with weak writing and a frantic overuse of effects (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (31 May 2007)

Revenge is a powerful and rarely a good one. For Peter Parker it is clearly something to be avoided as it has turned his former friend into his most deadly enemy. However Peter himself finds himself sucked into the web of revenge and violence as it emerges that the man who police now believe killed his uncle has just escaped. A simple feat to bring him to justice? Perhaps, but Flinto Marko has also stumbled into some sort of experiment and has been transformed into the Sandman. While battling these two foes, Parker finds a use for a black, symbiotic substance that has attached itself to his Spiderman suit, giving him great power. But is the power from this alien source as innocent as Parker hopes?
After seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean films and being very disappointed and bored, I decided to keep my toe in the summer blockbuster pool (what choice do I have?) and see the third Spiderman film. Having been impressed by both of the other two Spiderman films I was quite disappointed to find an overly busy film that offered me very little apart from special effects. These were impressive as always but (as with Pirates) the ability to do so much on screen should not mean that so much has to be done. Sadly here the effects sequences are overly busy and frantic and it was hard to feel involved in the action or build a tension  in a way it was often little more than a swirling video game sequence.
The knock on of the effects is that the whole film does feel quite superficial  something to be expected to a point from a summer multiplex filler but not something that should be embraced in the way it is here. The most glaring issue is the volume of characters in the film because this causes so many other problems. Flow-wise each of these characters has to be introduced and mostly this is done by handy coincidence and lazy writing; eg Venom hits Earth just as Parker is in the woods and doesn't jump him until he happens to be in his Spiderman suit, or how, guess what, now Marko killed your Uncle, or Eddie Brock happening to be in the church where Venom leaves Parker etc. One of these is forgivable but there are so many of them that it reveals the whole thing to be build on easy narrative devices that lack sense. The writing problems continue in the way that the theme of revenge is dealt with; it could have been a real strong base for the action but instead it is very superficial with no meat on the bones; the killer for me being when Harry forgave Peter simply because his butler said "oh yeah, forgot to mention, your Dad died of his own wounds  sorry for not mentioning it sooner", at that point I nearly laughed out loud.
The lack of meat in the script but an abundance of characters also means that it flows at a basic level and a lot of the fun is gone. There are still some funny moments and JJ is still a great side character but it doesn't have the buzz and energy of the other films. The cast struggle with this as well. Maguire works at the same level as the script and his inner turmoil is just as superficial and seems to be switched on or off in each scene. It doesn't help that his "evil" look is that of a spotty emo in a mood with his parents but he can't find anything in himself to improve matters. Dunst and Franco are equally as basic and they act knowing that there are no "real" people on their pages, just cardboard cutouts. Church is rubbish for the same reason and his final scene was as bad as he was. Grace was a weird find but his fall to revenge was too quick and easy and it robbed his end of any meaning. Simmons can do no wrong for me and produces one of the funniest scenes, although another one belongs to another Campbell cameo who is wonderfully "French" in the background of one scene.
Overall then it probably has just about noise and popcorn appeal to pack them in and indeed it has broken opening weekend records in the US but this does not indicate a good film, which this certainly is not. With too much going it the potential is wasted and the ideas and themes are sketched rather than detailed. This knocks through into everything else and produces little more than a video game with cut sequences. Not terrible by any means but a massive drop in quality compared to the previous two films.