FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Spider-Man has reached the status of icon. His image is everywhere around the city and can be seen on all sorts of merchandise. That’s a little tough for Peter Parker’s/Spidey’s girlfriend, Mary Jane, to handle. You see, she just finally got her break in a Broadway show and then got panned for horrible performance (see below). Peter’s friend Harry wants to take revenge on Spider-Man for killing his father. Eddie Brock wants to take Peter’s photography job at the Daily Bugle. Then there’s this guy who turns into a sand monster and starts terrorizing the city. And to top it all off, some black goo comes down from space and blackens Spider-Man’s suit and heart.

After setting the bar so high by releasing two moderately good films, this newest entrant was almost doomed to fail. But even with my lowered expectations it still managed to disappoint. Let’s discuss, shall we? For starters look at that very brief plot synopsis I wrote above. There is just way too much going on here. The series hasn’t had the best track record (with me) for being able to balance Peter’s personal life story with his private superhero life story. Now they want to throw this potential engagement and love pentagon story (Peter, Mary Jane, Harry, Eddie, Eddie’s girlfriend Gwen) at us while stuffing three villains down our throats in completely unsatisfying portions.

They could have easily devoted an entire movie to each of the three bad guys. Deal with the personal stuff while tackling Harry as the new Green Goblin out for revenge. Give Sandman and his resilient re-constructible powerful form a whole story. And definitely devote an entire picture to the black symbiotic slime turned evil doppelganger that is Venom. Hell after that story is done give Venom his own movie without Spider-Man. The reason you do that is because as it stands the villains are just spread out too thin and I felt cheated, especially in the case of Venom.

Nothing seemed to really work in this film. It’s like Sam Raimi forgot what makes a good action movie. Why would you ever bookend a summer blockbuster like this with musical numbers? Why would you have our hero talk it out with a bad guy? There’s nothing I love more than to see a pow-wow session to solve their problems. Why would you have a long dance scene in the middle? Why did you think Emo Spider-Man would be a good idea at all? Where was the consistency?

The film seemed like each individual scene was trying to be its own little movie. Too many of them carried a tone separate from the surrounding scenes. It was all over the map and failed to be the cute or funny or heartwarming or thrilling or intense or sing-songy or romantic or whatever scene it was trying to be at that moment. Bruce Campbell’s scene was good, but not for a Spider-Man movie. The only thing that had any sort of uniformity was the aerial action scenes. You simply cannot tell what in the world is going on in these. You see a blurry red suit flying past a bunch of crazy angled blurred buildings along with some villain. You basically have to rely on the soundtrack to clue you in when something was thrown or when someone gets hit, because it simply moves too fast. The action isn’t very exciting to begin with. I think it’s because all the other elements of the picture pull you out of it, that the fight scenes have to really work to win you back.

I really don’t know how I was able to keep my attention focused on the screen for the entire too-long 140 minute running time. Maybe it’s because eventually I gave up and started laughing at it. I mean there are only so many locket and ring shots a guy can take before giving up. You’d think a director like Raimi wouldn’t insult our intelligence like this. Everything was phoned-in. The actors were worse than usual (and I sincerely hope Dunst never works again), as was the dreadful dialogue in the script. I felt like the movie was just a big F-You to the audience. They knew it was going to make money so why bother making it good. If a fourth one gets made, I’ll tell you, there’s only room to go up. But after all this bashing, I have to say that somehow “X-Men 3” is still worse.

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