Oh, what a tangled web we weave

Rating: 7/10 (9 August 2009)

I base this upon the 2-Disc Special Edition. That's not sand choking you... it's the three plots that could easily each be a movie in itself. The writing has already been mentioned. It's impossible to do justice to that much content, and while it is a mess at times, it doesn't do as bad as could be expected. This has fewer cringe-inducing moments than the first two, but what there is is potent. For the first time in the trilogy, I actually laughed when I was meant to(and quite a few times where I wasn't). I wouldn't object to every single frame that contains singing and dancing in this to be excised, and possibly torched. The action is engaging and cool. I never found Maguire threatening. The added characters are underused, not developed enough and kind of a waste of a lot of fantastic comic material. Like the second flick, this didn't have a finished script ready when production began, and oh boy did it show this time. They managed to work it out on that sequel, not with this one. It still looks excellent. The effects are astounding. There are memorable sequences in this. The cast is all great. Grace obviously doesn't make an impressive, well, if you should know what he plays, you probably already do, so to avoid spoilers, I won't put it here. I get why they gave him the role, and his performance isn't "poor", as such. It's unfortunate that the decision was made to jam so much into this one, when it could be better if split up. All in all, this is entertaining, if not as dramatic and epic as it would like to be. There are several featurettes, most of which I will review at their respective entries on this site, photo galleries, trailers(for this and other flicks), a music video and two commentary tracks, a Raimi & actors one, and a film-makers(producers) one. I recommend this to those looking for a fun follow-up to the first two, that tries for, and generally succeeds reasonably at, being as deep and interesting as its immediate predecessor. 7/10