I want my money back!

Rating: 1/10 (3 June 2007)

Hated it! Yes, that's right, I hated it! The only redeeming part of the movie was J. K. Simmons as Mr. Jameson. In my opinion he is one of the most perfectly cast roles in the history of Hollywood. But, it wasn't enough for me to really enjoy the rest of the movie.
I think that my biggest problem with the movie was that the fight scenes were simply way to involved and complicated. They just went overboard with everything and because there was so much going on it was hard to really get into it. During the very first fight between Spidey and Hobgoblin Jr. I was actually bored. It's like movies back in the 1970's. A movie comes out and has a car explosion in it. Then, someone else makes a movie and they have to have 2 car explosions. Next thing you know they're blowing up all the cars in the world. I'm starting to see that with CGI. They're pushing the boundaries of what they can do, which unto itself is good, but I think that in some cases they overdo it and just make the fights needlessly complex.
I normally judge movies by how many times I check my watch. A good movie is one where I check my watch once or twice. During a really great movie I don't check my watch at all. During this movie I checked my watch about 10 times, which is a new record for me. At one point I actually thought about getting out my newspaper (which I had been reading while on the train to the theatre) and finishing up my crossword puzzle. The only thing that stopped me was that I didn't want to make any noise with the paper as I opened it up the right section.
Oh, wait, Bruce Campbell had a good roll in the movie, and I do always get a laugh whenever I see Ted Raimi on the screen. I think Topher Grace did an OK job, but I was really surprised that even though I was looking for his character I completely failed to realize it was him when he showed up next to the copper to take a picture of his girlfriend. But, his job wasn't a great job. Still, it's good to see him moving beyond his role of Eric Foreman. All in all, I wish I could get my money back and I wish I could get back those 2+ hours of my life. They would have been better spent watching some other movie (such as Breaker Morant which I just picked up on DVD and haven't watched yet) or doing something more worthwhile, like scratching myself and trimming my toe nails for a couple of hours. I guess that after The Return of the King and X-Men 3 that the old movie trilogy curse of "Third time's a dud" has come back to haunt parts of Hollywood.