Thursday, May 10, 2007
Walking out of the exhilarating Spider-Man 2, everyone realized that the challenge for the third movie would be to keep things interesting after boyish superhero Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire, who was born for this role) won over his long-time love, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), and proved able time and again to defeat any villain thrown his way. Faced with this difficulty, writer/director Sam Raimi did what many others would do — he overcompensated. The result is Spider-Man 3, a film that takes its precious time creating conflicts and forgets to leave the time necessary to effectively resolve them all.
The primary conflict is with Venom, an alien parasite that latches onto the sleeping Parker, giving him increased powers at the expense of his esteemed character. It’s tough to imagine the lovable Maguire acting like an asshole — which is precisely why it’s so hilarious. Only after ridding himself of Venom, which in turn latches onto the character who becomes the main villain, can Parker begin to win back the heart of the city and Mary Jane.
To push Spider-Man to his crime-fighting limits, Raimi includes the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church), a villain whose back story is so discordant with the main plot that only the sticky webbing of Spider-Man himself could effectively hold it together with the rest of the film. Raimi is, of course, no superhero, so his attempt at cohesiveness, which includes amending the story of Uncle Ben’s death (a decision that will anger comic book purists), falls flat.
Aside from this misguided sub-plot, Spider-Man 3 works well enough. The special effects are up to snuff and the acting is solid, but 3 is still the weakest installment of this highly respectable series.
Rating: PG-13
Run time: 140 minutes
* * * out of 5 stars
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