Spiderman 3

Spoiler level: Moderately High

Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3 recently demolished box office records with its $150 million opening weekend haul, which amounts to about ten bucks for every close-up of the principal actors’ eyes welling with tears. “There’s no crying in baseball,” Tom Hanks once said, but there’s most definitely crying in crime-fighting. Oh, so much crying!

The soap opera, er, superhero saga picks up where the second left off, with Peter Parker enjoying Spiderman’s newfound popularity, especially with members of the police force, who are apparently just paid to stand around and point up with gaping jaws (Spidey better watch it or Bill Nighy’s going to show up and make him chase geese around Sandford). Peter wants to propose to Mary Jane, but she’s all sulky about a well-deserved bad review she received of her Broadway debut.

If Raimi drew inspiration from the Donner/Lester Superman movies for his first two Spiderman installments, he seems to have been watching too much Nick at Nite when considering this one. Harry Osborn gets hit on the head, and, in grand Gilligan/coconut tradition, forgets he was mad at Peter for supposedly killing his dad. James Franco is about equally frightening as best friend or mortal enemy. He grips a sentimental basketball like it’s a skull that needs some crushin’, but Peter doesn’t seem to notice, and our pals are chummy again, mostly to buy time for the screenwriter to introduce the new baddies.

The more superfluous of the new villains is Sandman, a.k.a. Flint Marko, a convict with a (natch!) weepy backstory and taste for Krueger-ian sweaters, who falls into the least secure science experiment that doesn’t involve Mentos and Diet Coke I’ve ever seen. Soon, he turns into a whirling sandstorm that steals money, and doesn’t do much else. In the laziest screenwriting since The Lost World’s oops-there-was-another-dinosaur-island-we-forgot-to-mention, we find out that, despite what we saw in the first film, Marko really killed Peter’s uncle. Peter, of course, wants revenge, which fortunately gives him something to do besides play (endless) phone tag with Mary Jane. Sandman insists on changing back into his Thomas Haden Church form whenever possible, presumably to justify hiring a name actor for a primarily CGI role.

This goes double for Topher Grace. His Eddie Brock character doesn’t have much to do either, until he turns into a snarling Bizarro Spidey named Venom. I’m not too familiar with the comic book roots of the character, but I would bet he isn’t constantly peeling back his licorice-y face so we can see Topher with fangs and Tasha Yar hair. It doesn’t help that Venom really only seems to be Eddie Brock in different clothes. It’s hard to feel threatened by this monster who still wields Grace’s snarky TV sitcom voice.

By the time Harry remembers everything, we’ve already suffered through Peter’s Fall Out Boy hair, Aunt May repeatedly reminding us this movie is about “forgiveness,” and a dance sequence so random and ill-advised, it’s almost endearing. This sets up the big finale, with the boys battling it out, and (wait for it…) Mary Jane in mortal peril. If they make a live action Legend of Zelda movie, Kirsten Dunst should play the princess – she’s got this damsel in distress thing down cold by now.

I’m a big fan of the first two movies, and Raimi in general, but I can’t even imagine sitting through Spiderman 3 again. It feels like Raimi let whatever Venom-type demon that persuaded him to make For Love of the Game back for an encore. It’s a thorough mess, and makes most Michael Bay movies look like models of coherence and restraint. If they make another of these, I think Raimi should pull a Tim Burton and stick to producing. Now where’s Joel Schumacher’s number?