But the button on the end of this sequence -- the scene where Peter has a deep conversation with The Sandman up on the I-beams of a skyscraper while Harry is dying in Mary Jane's arms down below -- nearly destroys everything else Raimi has achieved. By this stage in the script, Peter's realized the error of his ways and recommitted himself not just to goodness, but diligent, ego-free goodness. That he would behave this way makes both the character and the film seem as tacky and weightless as Batman and Robin It's unconscionable: an example of moral forgetfulness (exemplified by the regrettable Harry Osborne amnesia business) that unfortunately dovetails with the film's tendency to get fixated on some subplots while forgetting about others that are theoretically just as important.
(There are a couple of moments where seems to slap itself out of a torpor and remind itself to check in on certain characters.) Screw-ups like this define what "plausibility" means in fantasy film. I'll accept a world where a super-villain can instigate a crane accident that just happens to imperil a young woman who just happens to attend the same science class as our hero.
For that matter, I'll accept that a meteorite containing parasitic goo that amplifies a person's dark tendencies would just happen to land a few yards from Peter and Mary Jane when they're canoodling in Central Park, and that the same goo would just happen to land on Brock later, and that Peter's uncle's murder -- an event established as the work of one crook in the original film -- would turn out to have been committed by a duo, half of which is Flint Marko. But I can't accept that the same protagonist that, in the climax of , calmly convinced a homicidally depressed Harry Osborn to shelve his grudge long enough to help save Mary Jane, would suddenly start behaving as if the world were just a big TV show that he could drift in and out of with no repercussions. (If Spider-Man's vanity resulted in multiple deaths and made him into a pariah again -- well, that would be a different story, and likely a more unsettling one than Sony would be willing to green-light.
) None of this should suggest that isn't worth seeing, just that it's frustrating -- alternately brilliant and cloddish. Every lead-footed misstep is followed-up by a sublime moment of broad slapstick or pained romanticism. Peter's swanky restaurant proposal to Mary Jane, with Raimi regular Bruce Campbell hamming it up in the background as a French-accented headwaiter, mixes the two modes, to dazzling effect; and there are some surprisingly spontaneous moments elsewhere, especially in the section where Peter and Mary Jane drift apart (mainly due to Peter's self-centeredness) and hook up, respectively, with Gwen and Harry.
As in Robert Altman's and Mark Rydell's James Dean film for TNT, Franco proves himself an irresistible man-boy scoundrel-saint, a bona fide movie star archetype. His seemingly improvised decision to have Harry try to impress Mary Jane by flipping an omelette feels just right; it's like a bit in a Mike Leigh film. A mid-movie gloss on 's wonderful "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" montage finds a goo-infected, vengeance-obsessed, raccoon-eyed Spider-Man pulling a and strutting around the city in a black suit to a funk soundtrack, ogling women and using his superpowers to gain advantage over mere mortals.
The sequence ends in a demented musical sequence at the supper club where Mary Jane ekes out a living; Peter literally steals the spotlight from Mary Jane, jamming on the piano like Bill Evans on crack, dancing around the club with Gwen, even leaping from table to table in defiance of gravity. It's a giddy rebuke to both Peter/Spidey's goodness and the superhero's obligation to keep a low profile (he looks like Peter but moves like Spidey); it's a crazy-admirable puncturing of audience expectations. Raimi is one of a handful of Hollywood power-players that wants to make light yet serious movies.
His sober (if inexact) examination of two key themes -- the moral yin/yang of vengeance and forgiveness, and the difference between a true self-image and one created by peers or the media -- makes third installment much weightier, and more deserving of respect, than it needed to be. Hype being what it is, the film would have made money even if it had recycled the second film wholesale; instead, it's consistent with, but different from, its predecessors. The first two s were knowingly grandiose and silly, but the melodrama was played straight, to the point where the unselfconscious earnestness of Raimi's actors (particularly Maguire, who turns on the waterworks faster than Gwyneth Paltrow) made some viewers snicker.
If you see in a theater, you'll hear plenty, and if it occurs within earshot of Raimi, I hope he takes it as a compliment. In an era when graphic bloodletting, badass posturing and bitchy sarcasm are considered edgy, the most radical thing a director can do is to wear his heart on his sleeve -- to show his or her characters feeling things intensely and present their emotions at face value, without mockery. does that even as it swings in the opposite direction of , dinging lampposts and smacking walls along the way.
posted by Matt Zoller Seitz at 4:00 PM But the button on the end of this sequence -- the scene where Peter has a deep conversation with The Sandman up on the I-beams of a skyscraper while Harry is dying in Mary Jane's arms down below -- nearly destroys everything else Raimi has achieved.
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