Sand in your shorts . . .

Rating: 3/10 (15 April 2014)

Being Spider-man is nothing if not a learning experience. The common thread through the Spider-man movies is that Peter Parker has to take a certain amount of responsibility for the powers given to him. This is a thread that began with Uncle Ben's famous proclamation in the first installment "With great power comes great responsibility" and continues on into this third movie.
Spider-Man 3 is minor a step down from the previous episode - but to be fair, Spider-man 2 was a tough act to follow. The second film nicely explored conflicts in his dual personality - it is fun to watch Spider-Man but it isn't as much fun to be Spider-Man. You're on call 24/7 and attempting to having a social life or a career can be difficult to fit it into your schedule. Here we get into the darker aspects of Peter's dual nature.
If his problems in the earlier film stemmed from juggling his normal life with his abnormal life, here the problems come in sheer numbers. 1.) He's got to deal with Harry (James Franco), who still blames him for his father's death and his turned himself into The Hobgoblin.
2.) He's got to deal with an escaped convict named Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) who outruns the cops an falls into a scientific something-or-other and gets a body made of sand.
3.) He's got to deal with an upstart (Topher Grace) who wants Peter's prospective job with the Daily Bugle and will do anything to get it. He later turns himself into Venom, an impressive mutant type creature who is sort of the anti-Spidey.
And 4.) a crawling, stringy hunk of black glop that - for not other reason - crawls out of a meteor crater and pursues Peter. It eventually becomes the catalyst for a challenge to Peter as he finds that he makes him tougher, angrier and more attractive to women (I could only think of those Axe commercials). In other words, it turns him into a jerk bent on selfishness and revenge. Some of this works because we see the darker and more dangerous sides of his personality and gives him a cool black suit (I love the fact that he stores the black suit an a nice large trunk and the red and blue in a smaller, humble suitcase).
What doesn't work are the ways certain plot elements are set up. Harry, for example, (he blames Spider-man for his father's death) has turned himself into Hobgoblin and intends to exact his revenge. During a somewhat confusing fight scene in an alley, Harry is bonked on the noggin and suffers short-term memory loss. It is convenient that he only has a loss of memory that stretches back to before his father died and therefore doesn't ever remember being ill with Peter. How long do you think it will be before it all starts coming back to him? I also wasn't convinced by the strains in Peter's relationship with Mary Jane. Their romance was so beautifully handled in the second film here tends to fall into soap opera territory - the thread being that he doesn't listen to her. The drama switches back and forth with misunderstanding on top of misinformation with the intent that Peter will propose marriage which is never really resolved.
The film never has a clear focus, it jumps back and forth between too many problems and too many characters, closing some and leaving others open for a fourth installment. Having a cadre of villains to deal with, I sincerely hope that the series isn't falling into the same trap as the Batman movies where there were so many villains that the movie lost track trying to keep up. Raimi does a better job of traffic control and the villains are well-defined. Every villain in this film has a personal beef with Peter, not just because he's the good guy.
What Spiderman 3 has are some are dramatic elements that continues the learning curve that Peter is experiencing. This is not the best Spider-man movie but it tries for something that most action movies of this type don't reach for - it's trying to tell a story and not just be a stunt show.