spiderman 3

Took in S3 on opening night, thanks to a last-minute invite from the next door neighbors.

Brian's "2 things" review of Spiderman 3 is thus:

1. If you could cut about 30 minutes out, you might have the best superhero movie of the past 5 years.

2. Unfortunately, 30 bad minutes is all it really takes to ruin a 140-minute movie.



----geeky and spoilerific details follow----




What was great about Spiderman 3 was that they brought in the Venom storyline, which occured right around the time I started reading Spiderman comics (late 80s) and therefore is kind of the core of the Spiderman myth in my mind. This necessarily explored some really dark territory. In my perfect universe, this movie would have gone full-out in this direction and been unapologetically R-rated. But, there's money to be made, and probably 80% of the audience in the theater we saw it was under 17 (and probably half of that under 12).

The casting was great. In fact, it was too great. Topher Grace did a superb job as Toby McGuire's foil. So much so, in fact, that I was left wondering why he didn't get the part of Peter Parker in the first place...and even more so, why Bryce Dallas Howard wasn't cast as Mary Jane Watson. (I find it very hard to believe that she is 50% Opie Taylor, natural hair color notwithstanding.) But the real scene stealer was Bruce Campbell, who did his part to make national stereotypes funny again.

What sucked were the musical numbers.

I wish I was kidding, and I wish the plural was an exageration. Seriously. Toby McGuire trying to look like a cross between 1970's John Travolta and Trent Reznor was funny for about 7.8 seconds (I timed it)--but Rami had to go and make a freakin' montage out of it. Then he snaps you back into the darkness with Peter hauling off and knocking Mary Jane to ground in a profoundly unfunny fashion, which has the net effect of killing the joke and trivializing the violence. (For the first time in my life, I think I felt an impulse that can only be described as parental--I sure as hell wouldn't want to explain that to an 8-year-old.)

It was a bit uneven, is what I'm saying.

Still worth seeing the theater for the effects, though.