Though it's lighter and maybe dumber, it's still pretty and it's still electric

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2007)

Spiderman 3 reviewed by Samuel Osborn
My endless fascination with midnight screenings brought me to the theatre at Union Square here in Manhattan last night, standing in line with every other fanboy garbed in a Spidey costume bought from the Kmart down the street and crushing into a third row/far left seating arrangement that cricked my neck up to the gargantuan screen above. The film rolled up to speed and the requisite clapping and whoops ensued. 140 minutes and a polite applause later we filed out. All of us shook our heads, some shaking in confusion while others shook in unguarded disappointment. This, after all, was not the Spiderman 3 we had anticipated. It was something broader, something simpler, something light. But to call this third entry into the mega-franchise a complete blunder is a gross overreaction. It's more that the big gust of air Spiderman 2 inhaled in preparation for the big trilogy finish is not the same air exhaled in Spiderman 3. The film is still the same gosh-wow cinematic event it was three years agoonly this time around, things have gone a bit goofy.
Things are as they were when we left Spiderman swinging through the steel and concrete canyons of the Manhattan skyline in 2004. He's still with the budding Broadway starlet Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) and still at odds with his best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), who now seeks revenge for his father's death. Peter's lost in romance and fame, anticipating a city festival in Spiderman's honor and spinning webs for him and MJ to lie upon beneath the shooting stars. He's pitching the idea of a marriage proposal to his widowed Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and excelling in school with his lab partner/supermodel Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard). Yep, things are good in Spidey-land; and especially good when Harry awakes from a harsh concussive coma to have forgotten Peter's involvement in his father's death. But leave a particle physics experiment and an alien meteorite alone long enough and you're bound to face a stray supervillain. So inevitably, it isn't long until Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church) and Venom are on the loose, robbing banks and infecting enterprising photographers (Topher Grace) like supervillains tend to do.
What's changed most here is the text behind the production. The original Spiderman was penned by David Koepp, screen writing veteran of Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and War of the Worlds. Spiderman 2 brought on board Alvin Sargent, a quieter writer known for Robert Redford's Ordinary People and the adultery riff, Unfaithful. This time around, Sam Raimi and his older brother Ivan penned the script with the help of Mr. Sargent. Sam Raimi's writing credentials include The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness. Though all three films are giddily remembered in all the majestic cheeseball glory, none of them would be considered the right material for the third entry into this multi-billion dollar franchise. And who trusted Sam's older brother Ivan to help put this story into theatres? Ivan's a doctor, not a writer. Anyway, this family pairing gave Spiderman 3 the wily gift of Camp humor. And Camp is something like the ugly lovechild of Satire and Parody: mischievous and unwieldy. When it works, it works (e.g. Evil Dead). When it doesn't work, the backlash from the audience can be fierce. And in Spiderman 3, the backlash will be vociferous.
The sequence most in question finds Peter Parker under the control of Venom, the alien parasite that, when infected, transforms its host into the manifestation of its worst character traits. We expect the grimmer, haunting side of Spiderman to rear its head here. Instead, Raimi gives Peter the emo hair-flip and pencils in black eye-liner. He dances in the street and gives the eye to girls walking past. He goes to a jazz club and showcases his surprise piano talents, dancing on top of the piano and picking a fight with the bartender while jutting his crotch out towards the ladies. And if that weren't an awkward enough addition to the Spiderman legend, Raimi poses all of this as a quasi musical dance number. So if nothing else, it is a fascinating and hideous thing watching the colossal Spiderman franchise nearly cannibalize itself in a matter of two short scenes.
Luckily, the action sequences are nothing if not spectacles, as usual. The feats of CGI workmanship are as we've come to expect from the Spiderman franchise, the perspective whirling about as if through the eyes of a highly enraged bumble-bee. If you aren't nauseated, you'll be amazed. The villains are the best they've yet been, with Sandman showcasing the state of artistic digital animation and the creepy, parasitic Venom living up to its insatiable hype by the film's end. It's all structured so as to make the action into fresh and sugary prizes for enduring the lesser story bits forced in between.
Spiderman has always pretended to be story-driven. And in the first two films the script was convincing enough so that we shrugged our shoulders and played along. But the Raimi brothers have indulged maybe too sloppily into comic book traditions this time and have let their story stray into something of an unintended joke. But for a franchise that relies on the tent-poles of event summer cinema, Spiderman 3 is still a blissful two and a half hour block of escapist fun. Though it's lighter and maybe dumber, it's still pretty and it's still electric.
Samuel Osborn