Too much, too contrived, but somehow still Spidey

Rating: 5/10 (25 August 2009)

Spider-Man 3 is the first movie where Sam Raimi has disappointed me. It's certainly a Sam Raimi film and it very much follows the previous movies in terms of style, presentation and even in terms of where its story goes, but where it fails is to tell a well woven tale.
The story follows after the events of Spider-Man 2 and both of the previous movies are briefly summarized visually during the opening credits, which is nice for those who have to catch up. Spider-Man has become the talk of the town and Mary Jane is opening up a show. Uh, then a whole ton of stuff happens in a hurry, including the introduction of three villains and a retcon of the first movie, which leads to a whole lot of emo-spidey/Peter Parker.
And there's so much attempted in this story that it just doesn't hold together. Several elements of the stories feel heavily contrived, just to get all the villains present. The Harry Osborn, the the Black Suit and Eddie Brock have enough going for them that they could have all held together their own movies separately, using just the Sandman as an intermediary villain, but so little time is spent developing any of the major story lines that the film literally tells us what's going on most of the time and does things like retconning events of the first movie to fit in motive for the second emo-Parker. Which in itself is an inversion of the whole "Raindrops Are Falling On My Head" sequence from the second film. Unfortunately, the charm wore off and the sequence went on far too long this time around. Also, because the film has to juggle so many events, it felt like I was a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth between a heated game of "let's change up the entire tone of the film with a dramatic twist" over and over again. I really didn't appreciate that we hit emo-Spidey/Parker three entire times over the course of the film, with him "getting better" each time. The stories, the Mary Jane/Peter Parker story, the Harry Osborn story, the Eddie Brock/Black Suit story and the Sandman story all just aren't given enough time to breathe and set before things change over again.
I got bored and I got frustrated. Furthermore, the Sandman, as a character is poorly developed and so are his powers, which ultimately seem overwhelming and it's surprising how easily he's defeated. The only character that gets some interesting development is Harry Osborn, but not enough time is spent with him and it doesn't feel like, at the end, what happens with him is earned by the film. So almost every element of the film seems a little forced.
Technically, the film is up to the standards of the previous films. It looks great and Raimi and company maintains their eye for color, for camera-work, for adding cheese when wanted and providing kinetic action. The actors all remain up to the standards established by the previous films and I really do like how the film feels so much like the previous two in terms of the overall presentation.
Ultimately, the only problem with Spider-Man 3 happens to be a huge one. The story essentially tries to sandwich what might be three movies worth of plot into a two hour movie (and yes, the movie really felt too long) and it just fails to pull me into its world, making me feel like I was getting smacked around by a giant plot stick. And it just seemed too obvious that it was trying to do that. And, so, I was quite disappointed by Spider-Man 3. It's not "the suck" entirely, because, contrived as it is, it still does try to tell a story (or two, or three) that might be coherent and meaningful if more time was given to it, but it doesn't succeed. I'd say it's fine to stop at Spider-Man 2 and leave the series on a good note. 5/10.