Spider bites

The third installment will leave you exhausted

Audio By Carbonatix

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Untitled Document Spider-Man 3 Running time 2:19 Rated PG-13 ShowPlace West, ShowPlace East
As the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise begins, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is sitting on top of the world. He and long-suffering girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) are in love, he’s doing great in graduate school, and New Yorkers have accepted Spider-Man as their resident savior. What could go wrong? Plenty, as fate (and director and co-screenwriter Sam Raimi) would have it. Not only does Parker’s former best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), unleash an all-out campaign to kill him, but Parker is also infected by an alien organism that adheres to whatever it touches, releasing the aggressive side of its host. To make matters worse, the new supervillain on the block, Flint Marko (a.k.a. the Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church), keeps crossing Spider-Man’s path. These plot elements alone would make for a well-stocked narrative, but Raimi also includes a love triangle involving Mary Jane, Peter, and his lab partner, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard); a rivalry between Peter and slimy news photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace); and a reexamination the murder of his Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) when police discover that Marko may have had something to do with it. Although Raimi and his co-writers should be applauded for trying to apply a sense of comic-book pacing to the movie, the result is overwhelming and ultimately exhausting. As far as the technical aspects are concerned, the visuals are of the highest quality and push the current technology to its limits, but this proves to be a double-edged sword. The Sandman’s first appearance is an awe-inspiring sight, but the film’s final battle, which finds four different characters careering about midtown Manhattan, is far too difficult to follow, inspiring confusion rather than wonder.

About The Author

Chuck Koplinski

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Writing for Illinois Times since 1998, Chuck Koplinski is a member of the Critic's Choice Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and a contributor to Rotten Tomatoes. He appears on WCIA-TV twice a week to review current releases and, no matter what anyone says, thinks Tom Cruise's version of The Mummy...

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