Movie Review: Spider-Man 3
Director: Sam Raimi Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, James Cromwell Theater: Muvico Egyptian 24, Hanover, MD
Spider-Man 3 is entertaining, but it's ultimately disappointing, falling victim to the same Hollywood "sequelitis" disease ("more/bigger/louder is better") that doomed PotC 2. The writing just does not live up to the exemplary standards of the first two movies. Sam Raimi should have brought in Michael Chabon to write the script like he did for Spider-Man 2, the best written super-hero movie ever. The Spider-Man 3 script is just a mess in comparison, with too many characters, too much plot (it takes like three or four plots from the comic book series and mashes them together into one movie), too many villains, and too many contrivances that could have been resolved by characters just sitting down and talking to each other. The first half of the movie is pretty good actually, but it falls apart in the latter half. It either needed to be an hour longer in order to fit everything in properly or the plot should have been pared way down, preferably the latter. Peter Parker is just kind of a jerk for about a third of the movie, squandering the affinity between the character and the audience. The music and dance sequence that comes out of that is a highlight, however, and made me wish for Spider-Man: The Musical. The movie is not a complete disaster, by any means. There are plenty of well directed, well acted, and well written scenes; they were just dragged down by an equal number of missteps, mostly in the script, unfortunately. Overall, if you're not a fan of the comic book or a completist, I would not recommend this one.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
darthed) wrote,
cranky
