Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence.
The setup: Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) battles the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom (Topher Grace), the New Goblin (James Franco), and his own egocentric impulses.
What works: Bruce Campbell's cameo as a pompous French waiter.
What doesn't: It's daring to illustrate the dramatic arc of Peter and Mary Jane's relationship through dance, but three separate musical numbers is excessive.
Great line: While battling yet another supervillain, Spidey wonders, "Where do these guys come from?"
In the third chapter of his adventures, Spider-Man faces his most fearsome foe yet: Dr.
Plotenstein, who snares Spidey in a knot of half-formed story lines, romantic complications and multiple villains. Can our hero fight free of the mess and emerge triumphant? Or will he fall victim to the dreaded Curse of the Third Superhero Flick?
Spider-Man's superb debut and its superior sequel were delights for lovers of spectacle and of story. Director Sam Raimi, working with veteran screenwriters David Koepp and Alvin Sargent, served up special effects pizazz without stinting on the human side. This installment, with Raimi taking a co-writer credit alongside Sargent, stumbles over its outsized ambitions.
What a tangled web we weave when we aim to overachieve. As the film opens in a New York City that adores Spider-Man, it's obvious that Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) has nowhere to go but down. As usual, he's trying to balance his private life with his superhero duties.
But he's not the lovable schnook of years ago: Adulation has swelled his head. He scarcely registers that his relationship with Mary Jane Watson (Kristin Dunst) is sputtering. When her Broadway debut is cut short by scathing notices, he insensitively tells her to buck up like he does when Spider-Man gets criticized.
Further inflaming the situation, Spider-Man shares a very warm smooch with gorgeous Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), whom the web-slinger saved from a collapsing office tower. Harry Osborn (James Franco), who enters the story as the vengeful New Goblin, reverts to his old, agreeable self thanks to a head-bonk that gave him amnesia, and thus looks like better boyfriend material to M.J.
Meanwhile, a meteorite by chance lands near Peter, releasing a blob of black alien goo that turns him into a nasty, swaggering black-suited Spider-Man. Meanwhile, escaped convict Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) randomly wanders into a particle physics experiment that mutates him into the Sandman, who can float like a dust storm but punch like concrete. Meanwhile, rival press photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) elbows Peter aside at the Daily Bugle, and becomes more than a professional threat when a stray drop of the space glop transforms him into the snaggle-fanged supervillain Venom.
Meanwhile, Harry remembers why he wanted to kill Spider-Man. Give Raimi credit for trying to break the prosaic bonds of superhero yarns and tell a complex story. He just didn't choose a story.
Rather than giving the film novelistic richness, the plot tangents leave one feeling overstuffed yet shortchanged. The villains have laborious character set-ups (we learn more about the home life of the Marko family than we need), and the young-romance episodes could have wandered in from a Zach Braff movie about a whiney college kid with commitment issues. The hugs-and-pain moments collide with big, poorly blocked action set pieces that send the combatants flailing across the Manhattan skyline like open firehoses.
In case we're not sufficiently excited, a TV reporter pops up to shout ringside commentary on the final battle royal. Many of the fight shots seem to be filmed from the perspective of a pogo stick atop a Ferris wheel attached to a merry-go-round. In these passages, the crisp work of John Dykstra, who won an Oscar as visual effects designer on "Spider-Man 2," is much missed.
In fairness, Scott Stokdyk, who took his place, contributes a gorgeous passage in which a billion particles slowly unify to create the Sandman, a curiously lyrical moment in a mall movie. With such unexpected flashes of delight, and Raimi's reliable good humor, "Spider-Man 3" is not a failure by any measure. It's mostly enjoyable.
But it's a limping effort compared with the first two. The trilogy hobbles to a finish when it should have soared.
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