A fine but flawed third outing

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2007)

The first Spider-man movie for me, alongside 'Batman Returns', was, and still is one of the great comic book movie adaptations ever, great story, characters you cared about and some great action set pieces.The second Spidy movie gained even more plaudits, except for me, yeah it was still great to look at but it was starting to get bogged down in Peter Parker's private life, and more so, Mary Jane's.
So we come to Spider-man 3, and I have to admit was wasn't expecting that much, but over-all I was pleasantly surprised.Let's deal with the major minus point this film has, one inherited from the previous film, Mary bloody Jane.This character spends the entire movie, moaning and complaining about how her career isn't panning out as hoped, how Spider-man is too busy to pay her enough attention.Please, if there's a fourth outing can we please kill this irritating excuse for a woman off!The scene in the restaurant when Parker slaps her made me stand up and cheer, yes that's how much she annoyed me.Another minor niggle was that there were a lot of villains for one movie, I thought Venom was nothing more than Spider-man with nasty pointy teeth.
Let's limit the amount of bad guys so that the one's we do have get plenty of time to smash things up,fight Spider-man and generally cause havoc. Now onto the good stuff, again the film is a visual feast, the scenes involving Sandman were spectacular and also the scene early on involving the crane.An appearance by Bruce Campbell is always a bonus, especially when his character is a snooty French restauranter.The action is fast and furious, yeas it does get a little bogged down with the amount of characters but this is two hours of fine pop-corn entertainment.
8/10