Brilliant Review of Spider-Man 3
Posted by dlw in Uncategorized at 2:01 pm | 
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It gets at both the greatness of the awesome scenes and its horrific developments.
“Yet nothing will quite prepare you for the staggering embarrassment to come. After being exposed to the space goo, Spider-Man’s latent hostility is awakened, and he transforms into a dark-suited avenger. Peter, however, transforms into a doppelgänger of Eddie Murphy’s Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor. Narcissism in full throttle, he struts around and, in general, makes an alpha-male spectacle of himself, yet the film can’t decide if this new Peter is meant to be dangerous sexy or just dorky; women laugh as he passes them on the street, yet Gwen, Miss Banks, and a jazz-club hostess all swoon. This extended Staying Alive parody is then followed by a horrifically staged sequence in which Peter - now a hipster pianist/dancer (!) - makes a fool out of Mary Jane in her workplace, and Raimi hits such awkward notes that you don’t know where the movie went; it feels as if the director suddenly abdicated his duties, leaving Keenen Ivory Wayans to take over.
Sequences this unremittingly terrible not only make you question the fun you had previously - you want to ask, “Was the whole movie this awful?” - but also ruin your enjoyment of the rest of the film. Questions that might’ve been ignored in waves of brilliant effects and earned sentiment become all too pertinent: How did Venom learn of Sandman’s ailing daughter? Why does Sandman join Venom’s quest to kill Spider-Man - wouldn’t he just want to take the money and get home? Why is the action suddenly interrupted for an extended, unfunny bit between Jameson and a grade-school extortionist? And while Spider-Man’s final confrontation with Sandman is suitably epic, why does the sequence climax on an astonishingly maudlin note? (It feels like the first cinematic battle royale that could conceivably end in a hug.) “
There’s gotta be something wrong with a world where such a movie can take a whopping 382 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Here’s hoping it flatlines…
dlw