A stunning disappointment...

Rating: 3/10 (4 May 2007)

I have been anticipating May, 2007 for a very, very long time. This month will see, amongst several other quality releases, a trio of tri-quels from series that have each already produced two excellent, hugely successful releases. The competitions for viewersand especially second-time viewerswill be huge. Analysts have placed their bets. Fan-boys and fan-girls are wetting their pants. Box office records will likely be shattered.
And it is amidst this level of hype that Spider-Man 3 swings onto the screen with a colossal thunk.
Our worst nightmare is confirmed: the curse of the tri-quel strikes again. Spider-Man 2 was superior to the first in nearly every way except earnings. The action scenes were cooler. The emotional scenes hit harder. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) came of age in spectacular fashion, descending through a dark valley of self-doubt and emerging to save the day, get the girl, and once again win our hearts.
In Spider-Man 3, Spidey again descends into darknessif "darkness" can be defined by bad hair, black eyeliner, and hitting on everything with a pulse within fifty feet of himself.
The convoluted, overstuffed, throw-everything-at-the-screen-and-hope-something-sticks plot goes something like this: When we last left our hero, he'd won the love of the fair Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and the gratitude of New York Citybut the hatred of his ex-buddy, disgruntled, alcoholic playboy Harry Osborn (James Franco).
In the film's best sequenceconveniently already made available on the InternetHarry dons his daddy's Goblin suit and goes out to butcher his ol' buddy Pete. The first sign that something is going terribly wrong is when this results in Harry contracting amnesia, forgetting everything he's spent the last two movies getting pent up. (Wait, amnesia? Is this a Sam Raimi film, or General Hospital?) Meanwhile, in a series of deus ex machina that boggles the mind, a meteor containing a strange black substance crashes to Earthapparently on the outskirts of New York, seemingly unnoticed by anyone (including Peter and MJ, not a hundred yards away). At the same time, escaped murderer and petty-crook-with-a-heart Flint Marko (Thomas Hayden Church, impersonating a plank of wood) falls into an absurdly low-security particle accelerator and gets sandblasted into the Sandman.
It's a superhero flickyou suspend your disbelief for this long. But then things just get silly. The black substance, it turns out, is symbiotic in nature, and it slowly begins to corrupt Spidey. Unfortunately, the ads lie. The black spider-suitfeatured in every posteris on screen for five minutes at most. Instead, director Raimi decides to focus on the slow degradation of Peter Parker's soulincluding the aforementioned eyeliner.
This leads to one of the most laughable middle portions ever committed to screen, and certainly the most laughable ever given a $300 million budget. As brilliant as Tobey Maguire is at playing sweet, dorky Peter Parker, he can't do "evil". ("Evil" Tobey was last seen raping Cate Blanchett in The Good German, another utterly ludicrous flick.) In a memorable shot, "dark" Peter stands in front of a mirror andgaspdrops a black forelock over his face, bearing a sudden eerie resemblance to Pete Wentz. If you thought Spidey went emo in the second film, you ain't seen nothing' yet. Maguire leaves the mask off, instead pompously (and unconvincingly) strutting around Manhattan, shooting leers at the girls, and, like he just dropped in from Flashdance, busts out his moves across a nightclub bar.
Remember those couple very funny moments from Spider-Man 2the snooty usher, the goofy violinist, the creepy landlord's daughter? Raimi has seemingly decided that the best way for Spider-Man to match Shrek the Third at the box office is to take those foibles and use them for two-thirds of the film. While several of these gags are funny, their overuse means that when Spider-Man 3 tries to get serious, it completely falls apart and instead turns from being intentionally to unintentionally hilarious. An audience should not be giggling maniacally through a protagonist's deathbut they were in my theater.
There's some random stuff thrown in too, most of which doesn't work. MJ sings two musical numbers, which are dull and unnecessaryas is her two-minute omelet-making routine (what?) with Harry. The scenes with Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) have lost all emotional punch. Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her father (James Cromwell) appear as unnecessary fan-service. The Sandman's action sequences are hit and miss. J.K. Simmons does manage to bring a little of the first two films back in yet another scene-stealing performance as Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson.
And then there's Venom (Topher Grace), also known as Peter's photographic rival Eddie Brock Jr.. If Venom had been saved for a fourth installment, given his own film a la the Green Goblin and Doc Ock, it would have likely been a thrilling success. Instead, Venom is an afterthought (the name "Venom" is actually never spoken in the film), appearing to inject a smidgen of life into the last segment of the film. Topher Grace plays the role with aplomb, easily overcoming his slight stature (Brock is heavyset and muscular in the comic series; this Venom seems to be inspired by the "Ultimate" continuity), and perfectly capturing the ordinary-guy-driven-to-hatred mentality. And he menaces a hundred times better than Maguire could dream of.
But Venom is in the film too briefly to ever use his legendary teethand the film itself has none. People were filing out of the theater well before the last shot, and the ones who remained were jeering derisively at the screen. Raimi and Maguire's canny evasion as to whether a fourth film is in the works now becomes clear. It's not a good thing when the most enjoyable part of an audience's night was the first two minutes of Fracture coming on by mistake.
BOTTOM LINE: Spider-Man 3 should spell the death of the series. Let's pray that Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End hold up better than this piece of cinematic garbage. C-minus.