Bad Spidey makes for a very bad Spiderman film

Rating: 1/10 (26 September 2007)

OMG - awful, horrendous, stupid, confusing, pointless, all of these words spring to mind when watching this movie, I mean what in the hell were these people thinking?
Spiderman is a worthy movie franchise, but I can't for the life of me work out how this script got green-lighted, what the reported $300 million production budget got spent on, who choreographed the dismal fight scenes, and worst of all who thought it would be a good idea to have musical numbers in the movie?!!!!!!!!!!
From the intro, it's pretty weak, I mean I understand you're covering your bases with keeping people up to speed on what has happened to Peter Parker/Spiderman for those who missed the first 2 movies, but did have to be done in such a cheesy way, and include a song from MJ (Kirsten Dunst's characters) Broadway show? And then bang boom, we are into a fight scene with the new Goblin, which is so confusing to watch. I understand you want to inject pace into a fight scene, but the way it's been directed everything is just a blur, you don't know what's going on.
Finally, Goblin is defeated, and low and behold, suffers memory loss, so he doesn't remember his grievance with Spidey. OK, a weak plot point, but it's made all the worse by the fact that the writers seems to think loss of memory also means regressing the characters mental age to 7 years old? I mean the dialog/acting for Hary (Jame's Franco's) character is just pointless and awful, it's really painful to watch.
The introduction to Sandman is even worse, I mean can we develop the character just a little so we understand his point of view/role in the movie? Instead, it's a 30 second monologue between him and his ex-wife to explain he's escaped from prison and has come to see his daughter and then bam, he's on the run from the cops and falls into a scientific experiment which turns him into Sandman. Errrr, hello? What was the experiment in the first place? How did it change him into Sandman? If he's completely made of sand, why one minute does he look like sand, and the next have normal skin color and clothes? Oh, and if I'd just been turned into sand, I think I'd be pretty upset about it, maybe shout a little, cry out, ya know, just show some emotion but oh no, not this guy, we get some cheesy moment with a necklace and a photo of his kid, and then he just quietly accepts he's turned to sand?!!!!!!! (for a while I thought that because he was now, ya know, made completely of sand, he had in fact lost his power to speak - but later we find out he can speak fine, which makes his reaction to turning to sand all the more stoopid). And yeah, I know it's a superhero movie, but that doesn't mean you don't need to explain anything.
And bad spidey? It all comes about because some alien virus just happens to land right next to Peter Parker and then hop on the back of his bike without him noticing? How did it get from the bike into his apartment? And where did it come from? And why does Peter Parkers professor, when shown this extraterrestrial life form, not phone NASA or the FBI or something, let them know he's found an alien life form? I mean, you sit through this movie constantly asking questions about why things are happening, where did that come from, why don't they do this, what just happened? A good movie doesn't make you constantly ask why characters are doing things, you go with it because you believe it, and even though this is a superhero movie, they've just pushed the boundaries too much. Or so you'd think?
Somehow, amazingly,
they manage to completely top all the crap that's gone before with a bad spidey jazz/dance routine???? WTF!!!!!!! At this point, you're done, the joke is over and it ain't funny, and the rest of the movie is just painful to sit through, but you persevere because you've been waiting nearly 2 hours at this point in the hope it would redeem itself, so you might as well see it through but it is a BIG relief when it is finally over.
The only good thing in this movie is Topher Grace, but unfortunately he has minimal screen time, and even less character development than Sandman, so his fleeting moments are too few and far between utter trash.
I can't understand what the writer and director were thinking, they've tried to cram too much into one movie having 3 villains (4 if you count bad spidey), which leaves none of them with ample time to really develop their characters or allow us to feel any sense of fear of them, the chemistry between Toby and Kirsten is not existent, meaning you don't believe they love each other or want to marry, in fact I spent my time saying "Don't marry him, you'll be divorced in less time than Britney!", and as for the direction and production value, where did all that $300 million go? As an example, Matrix was in 1999, that's 8 years ago, so how can the effects in this movie not be as good as those from 8 years ago, but cost twice as much, how does that work?
This is the Batman & Robin of the Spiderman franchise. I remember when this movie was first released Toby and Kirsten were doing interviews saying it wasn't fun to make and they didn't want to do anymore. Now I can see what they were talking about. But, because of the box office, they're mentioning doing Spiderman 4. Based on this movie, why they'd want to do that is beyond me.