Spiderman 3

Some movies can go longer than 2 hours and you’re so engaged that you can barely feel it. Spiderman 3 is not one of those movies.

Spiderman/Peter Parker faces a horde of villains in part 3, including the serious-faced Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church, whom I love), Venom (Topher Grace, who plays the role ok), the New Goblin (Harry Osborn, the cute but crooked-eyed James Franco) and even the evil-within-version of Spiderman himself, who dons a cool black costume and acts with uncharacteristic aggression. The action scenes are good but the background plot drags on. There’s a lot of tears and heartache during the scenes where Uncle Ben is mentioned (with nostalgic flashbacks) and in the scenes between Peter and MJ, whose relationship is true of the Shakespeare quote, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’.

Some of the best scenes (eyebrow-raising humorous but at times painful to watch) are when Tobey Maguire plays the changed Peter Parker – the hip-wriggling, girl-chasing, emo-haired, egotistical flirt. The worst are when Kirsten Dunst sings – you can see why, in the plot, she gets kicked off Broadway.

It’s never explained where the black parasitic symbiote (?) that turns Spidey bad comes from (except from out of space) or why it’s targeted Peter Parker. This and other holes in the plot don’t make it wholly satisfying, but it’s a decent movie with great CG and will probably be a great babysitter for the kids.

Rating: 7/10
A superhero with a villainous side is always interesting.