Good, but...

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2007)

Only the ache in my legs when I got up told me that I'd sat through over 2 hours of the latest Spider-Man film. It was full of wham-bang action and quality acting and I was glad to have caught it on the big screen.
This is where the "buts" come in...
However, at times I caught myself wondering if Sam Raimi hadn't over-reached himself with this movie. There were a lot of complex special effects on display in some of the action sequences and as well-rendered as they were, they required me to suspend my disbelief on a very slender webline. In places there was just too much going on to take it all in.
Raimi and his cast did a good job of telling a human story as well as providing a golly-gee action romp, but as the kids all around me shuffled and muttered during the "quiet" bits, I began to question the way that the Spider-Man franchise was being marketed.
There's the obligatory appearance of Spidey's co-creator Stan Lee (and the great man gets a little dialogue this time, yay!), great supporting performances from Ted Raimi, Theresa Russell, Bruce Campbell, Rosemary Harris and J K Simmons. Kirsten Dunst is given a run for her money in the "Screaming Girlie" stakes by Bryce Dallas Howard. Tobey Maguire and James Franco get to do some scenery chewing while Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church provide us with a pair of reliably human villains. Unfortunately, all this talent on show only increases the feeling that "Spider-Man 3" is a quart jammed into a pint pot. Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, James Cromwell and Bryce Dallas Howard are wasted in this film, with thin and sketchy cartoon roles designed to fit the plot. Dunst and Franco are particularly ill-served, having provided sterling support in their previous Spidey outings, with their characters doing little more than jumping through a series of plot-driven hoops. A lot of the heart of the previous films has been torn out of "Spider-Man 3" by forcing its main characters into a contrived and immature storyline rather than continuing to spin the Peter-MJ-Harry love triangle thread.
It's just too good, which I know is a strange criticism for a film. What I mean is that it needed to be slimmed down at the planning stage, instead of chucking so many good actors and so much quality CGI at a "Worthy" screenplay. All of the Spider-Man movies have something to say about the people we all want to be, but in this 3rd instalment it feels a little like the drama has been dumbed-down to make room for all those eye-catching visual effects. The cringe-making TV reportage of Spidey's climactic battle with the bad guys is symptomatic of the movie's "More is Less" malaise. It's simply unnecessary and it's badly done too. Another ridiculous add-on is Harry Osborn's butler Bernard, who was conspicuous in his absence in Parts 1 and 2. Bernard's earnest little speech about Harry's father is one of the most contrived pieces of exposition ever witnessed outside a Matrix movie.
"Spider-Man 3" is nowhere near as good as 1 or 2, and Spidey will become another victim of The Law of Diminishing Returns unless someone takes a long hard look at what makes this franchise work. Having now viewed it on DVD, I'm downgrading it to "Average". A lot of the action scenes are cluttered and confusing and the contrived 3rd act seriously undermines Sam Raimi's reputation.