D.C. MOVIE GUYS

News that Spider-Man 3 would pit New York’s friendly neighborhood web slinger against Sandman, Green Goblin and Venom initially spawned nightmarish flashbacks to the horrid villain laden Batman films of the late 90′s. Sam Raimi did not fall into the same trap with Spider-Man as Schumacher did with Batman. Unfortunately, even though Spidey fans are spared spider nipples, it is time to revoke Raimi’s web spinners. Spider-Man 3 is annoying and painful to watch.

The Flint Marko/Sandman events came closest to providing any cohesive storyline. His back story and motivations were believable. However, the Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) side trips while hopped up on Venom were silly and lacked any entertainment value. Tobey Maguire still plays Parker as a bungling teenager despite his passage into adulthood. Even the Peter Parker of comics grows up. Despite Parker’s goofiness, the film does take his relationships with other characters in interesting directions. Spidey/Peter and Goblin/Harry interactions could have been fantastic. Instead, their banter must have been fished out of George Lucas’s trash from what even he deemed as unusable dialog between Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Multiple villains could have worked in this film and the ground work was there to make it happen, but bad dialog, poor spidey acting and too many un-entertaining divergences leave Spider-Man 3 short of an enjoyable film.

Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom and Thomas Haden Church/Sandman did turn in very good performances, but they were not enough to combat Maguire’s sickeningly sappy Spider-Man/Parker or a script seemingly churned out by chimps with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence.

Only 2 stars from this true believer.