Spider-Man 3

I carry on my series of cutting-edge posts of deep thought and political indignation with this review of a movie based on a comic book!
Short review: Spidey 3 is a good film. See it if you liked the last two.
Long review: On reflection, I have no time for a long review. Instead…
Medium-length review: Yeah, it does the business quite nicely thanks. There’s some genuine emotion in there, a heaping helping of melodrama, and the superhero action sequences are jaw-dropping and remind me how far our visualisation technology has come from the bad old days of Nicholas Hammond making climbing motions while a winch reeled him up. (Hmm, I bet YouTube has a clip, let me search… ah, here we go.)
Like both previous flicks, it has some serious weirdness in there – in this case a thoroughly weird dance sequence right in the middle of things – and perhaps the least convincing Stan Lee cameo yet, which is saying something. More unusual still is the structure of the thing. It is a long 2 1/2 hours, and it crams a hell of a lot into that running time. Like much of Raimi’s work, the narrative doesn’t run like a conventional Robert McKee story, and instead speeds along with lots of little peaks and troughs. In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as sitting down to read a year’s worth of spidey comics all in a row, telling its story as lots of little micro-stories with overarching plot development and soap-opera subplots set up in one issue, paid off in the next.
The plot(s) aren’t genius and probably won’t stand up to much scrutiny – I haven’t scrutinised and don’t intend to, but my instinct is it would all collapse if I looked too hard. The behaviour of one of the villains, Sandman, really makes no sense at all. It ultimately doesn’t matter. Don’t let this spoil your fun; instead, imagine how you would retcon it when you take over the franchise in future! Hours of fun. Or, not.
Anyway, if you expect to like this film, then you will get your money’s worth. Simple as that.