Thursday 10 May 2007

Tane's Reviews: Spiderman Three

With movies, third time is not the charm. In fact, third time is often when the rot sets in. Godfather 3, Return of the Jedi, X-Men 3.

Sadly, this is the case with the Spiderman franchise too. It’s guilty of a common sequel failing – in trying to up the ante above what has gone before, it get bloated with too much plot twists and too many characters.

A pity, because there’s much to like about it. Taken individually, the storylines are strong ones. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is New York’s biggest hero, while girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst, again making the best of a thin role) is in the doldrums. High on his fame, Peter is oblivious to her problems. Things rapidly get worse when a hot classmate of his develops an attachment to Spiderman, old friend Harry Osbourne decides to seek revenge for his father’s death, a competing photographer upstages him and a powerful new villain, the Sandman (the excellent Thomas Hayden Church), appears. Worst of all, an alien substance develops an unhealthy attachment to the webslinger.

To the credit of writer/director Sam Raimi, he manages to keep all these plates spinning in the air for most of these movie. There are injections of humour, the actors do a fine job and the special effects, especially the Sandman ones, are fantastic. The big action scenes do not disappoint, with a berserk crane running the Sandman’s first appearance close for the title of the movie’s best scene.

But the tangle of plots means the movie first loses momentum and then hurries haphazardly into its big finale. There’s one villain too many in this movie, which does a rushed job of bringing all its stories together for a finale that features a couple of wrenchingly corny moments.

Fans, of which I am one, will still enjoy Spiderman 3, but if you did not like its predecessors, do not bother going.

7/10

Lauren’s Two Cents:

A Pearl Harbour movie. Great scenes, great costumes, great concept, but the end result is plain old mediocre. Not a waste of money, but not a movie that will be recommended to others either. 6.5/10

3 comments:

Doctor_Harves said...

I agree Laureen

Anonymous said...

I thought it deserved no more than a 4. Probably the worst movie I've seen in a very long time.
-Laura

Anonymous said...

Oh, the word 'injections' is plural.