I have three words for Spider-Man 3: What. The. Hell. Plus, I have five excellent reasons to mock the otherwise superlative director Sam Raimi's cinematic disaster. I refused to read reviews in advance, and therefore was a blank slate, capable of being genuinely shocked when Black Spidey busted out the emo look and funky moves. Sometimes shock is a good thing in movies -- all hail Hostel and Re-Animator -- but this was the bad kind. Spider-Man 3 delivered the sort of shock you feel when somebody standing next to your seat on the subway farts on your neck.
And so, allow me to enumerate the reasons for mockery:
5. Black Spidey goes all 30 Seconds to Mars with the suit and the eyeliner. Do not attempt to mix comic book sensibility with MTV unless you are Brian K. Vaughan or Warren Ellis. I repeat: DO NOT ATTEMPT.
4. Funky walking, finger snapping, table dancing, and (arrgh!) playing the piano in a jazz club are all signs of evil? Signs of "I wish Jim Carrey were in this flick," yes. Signs of bad writing, yes. Signs of bad acting, BIG yes. But no, not signs of evil. Sorry.
3. Abuse of Bruce Campbell. How is it possible that Sam Raimi could write a scene for his old buddy Campbell, the handsome B-movie maven behind Bubba Ho-Tep and *The Man with the Screaming Brain, *and make it unfunny, too long, and sort of a shitty Monty Python rip-off? What is the world coming to?
2. Completely extractable, extraneous Sandman plot. Hello, we've all seen these swirly sand effects before in The Mummy. Plus we've all seen Thomas Hayden Church acting up a storm in Sideways. Is this flick Church's way dating down or something?
1. Too many bad guys with hearts of gold. Baby Green Goblin is loyal to Spidey after all. Sandman loves his sick daughter and apologizes to Spidey for shooting his uncle. And vengeance-obsessed Spidey forgives Sandman in a church. Yuck! Barfing now! Going back to reading comic books where Spidey's radioactive sperm kills Mary Jane!
