A Movie Review. Take What You Will; Discard the Rest

I know how uninteresting movie reviews by amateurs are, so I'll keep this brief.

We saw Spider Man 3. Fortunately my hopes had been severely dashed by critics' reviews (see Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post). Expectations were low.

Like Bubblehead, and rather in spite of myself, I liked it. Contrary to how it was marketed (which would have you believe there was an interesting, more organic evolution of Spider Man's alter ego), it is primarily a love story, with a lot of silly sub-plots contrived to move the narrative along. Sandman and Venom were expendable and the CGI was a distraction. (Entire scenes were cartoonish and just plain annoying.) And the director seems to be mistaking our hero for the more formidable Super Man. There is only so much abuse a spider-man hybrid can take before our ability to suspend disbelief is severely taxed!

Yes, there were awful moments. The director made some bad choices, and the writers didn't help. But as a mechanism for uncovering and developing the more serious themes of humility, personal responsibility, friendship, forgiveness, and redemption it worked.

I am a great Spidey fan but I was not a reader of the comic books. My suspicion is that this installment is a vehicle for telling a part of the tale that must be told if we are to understand the real dynamic between Spider Man (or more correctly, Peter Parker) and M.J.

I expected a finale, but this does not feel like the end of the franchise.