"It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s an aranchoid freak of nature whose also host to an evil alien symbiote parasite, whose best friend wants to kill him, then doesn’t, then does, and whose fighting three bad guys at once. Er.. This film is suppose to make sense, right?"

Spiderman 3 is.. a mess of ideas. Blessed with a surfeit of imagination, and an overdose of effects, it’s certainly not a worthy successor to it’s predecessors. In this, Spiderman goes dark and moody, flicking peanuts around a Metropolis Bar, and righting the Leaning Tower Of… wait, wrong movie. In Spider Man 3, Spidey gets in touch with his evil side, and fights with himself in a garbage disposal… wait, wrong movie. A church.

At least it hasn’t got Richard Pryor in it. However Spider Man 3 does have the frankly impossible “Venom”, and the highly improbable “Sandman” (thankfully played as more than a razor thin cipher of evil) as two bad guys who team up through a mutual hatred of Spiderman. Can you guess the ending? On the basis of the fact that there are going to be three more sequels, I think it’s easy to suggest that Spiderman doesn’t take a dirt nap and meet his maker in this episode. The question isn’t Does Good Triumph?, but how and who dies on the way.

Kirsten Dunst meanwhile, seems to spend most of the film as a McGuffin with no personality of her own, leaping from calamity to calamity, improbable moment to impossible danger, and seems to be called on to do no more than sulk and scream. Not content with three bad guys (four if you include Evil Spidey), and Kirsten Dunst, they also shoehorn in a second, pointless love interest, reshoot some of the first movie.. in fact, about the only thing they do do right is provide Bruce Campbell with a delicious cameo that is a highlight of both the movie and his career. How Vin Diesel gets to make movies instead of Bruce I’ll never know. This guy chews scenery like a starved dog and overshadows the rest of the picture for the bland stodge it unfortunately is.

Action movies have fallen a long way from their peak. In the eighties, blockbusters were endlessly quotable pieces of dodgy hokum that were formed from the singular vision of some demented genius. There is more memorable talent in one character in any Schwarzenegger movie than in the whole of this crowded, overlong jigsaw of a movie. Spiderman 3, by trying to please all masters, in the end wins none. It’s a forgettable piece of popcorn that aims high and fails to hit it’s targets.

But it’s certainly better than anything you’ll see this summer with Steve Martin or Keanu Reeves in it. It’s better to aim high and fail than forever stare at the stars with the mediocre.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!