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Spiderman 3
So, the bugs and I go to see Spiderman 3 last night. Spidey-senses tingling, we park ourselves in a crowded theater on the 3rd Street Promenade. Even the previews are exciting (Fantastic 4, Harry Potter 5), and we’re eagerly awaiting the return of Peter Parker and the Gang. We don’t even care all that much that there is a screaming baby about 10 feet away, and the parents seem blissfully ignorant of their ear-splitting offspring. No sweat. NOTHING is going to ruin this movie!
Except, as it turned out, the movie.
The opening has Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) belting out a Broadway number and looking like she just stepped off the set of “Young Frankenstein.” She quickly loses this gig (mainly because she sucked) and spends pretty much the rest of the movie either whining or screaming. At one point, when Peter Parker (under the influence of some strange alien goo that makes him all aggressive) is being thrown out of a restaurant, he accidentally pops her and knocks her to the floor, and the audience actually cheered.
There isn’t an ounce of chemistry (or, seemingly, even one testicle) between the two of them. She’s pissed that Peter is getting all the attention, and Peter’s acting like the type of jerk you really want to slam into the locker at school. As he’s being taken over by the alien goo, he slicks his hair down into a faux Emo-style and starts dancing – DANCING down the street. Even the extras in this movie looked like they were thinking, “Oh God, this movie is going to suck so hard it’ll make a black hole look like a hooker with a mouthful of Novocaine.”
James Franco is back as Harry Osbourne who takes over as the new Goblin, but he’s so bad at it that he ends up with amnesia (until it becomes convenient to the plot for him to get his memory back). Thomas Haden Church is Flint Marko (AKA the Sandman), an escaped robber-murderer-daddy-of-a-sick-kid who, whether he’s shooting someone, pounding Spiderman, stealing stuff or talking with his daughter has one, and only one, mournful expression. The bad guy triad is completed by Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), a photographer competing with Peter Parker who ends up getting splashed with the aforementioned alien goo and becomes Venom, a hideous, black anti-hero with a serious periodontal problem.
The last action sequence wasn’t half bad, but it was totally offset by the amount of weeping done in this movie. Everybody is crying in this film! For the love of all that’s holy – this is supposed to be a superhero movie, not “Steel Magnolias.” It was so bad that people were laughing at what (I can only assume) were the dramatic parts
Director Sam Raimi toys with the audience at the end. You keep thinking the credits are finally going to roll, but no – there’s yet another scene to suffer through. Near the end Mary Jane starts to sing again, and the people in the theater started muttering, “Oh dear God, nooooo!” When the end finally (and mercifully) did arrive, the audience erupted with their loudest ovation yet.
My prediction is that Spiderman 3 is going to have a huge opening weekend, but will swiftly peter parker itself into DVD oblivion. I want that 2 hours and 20 minutes of my life back.
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