More than 3

Some of you may recall my near obsessive concerns with Battlestar Galactica spoilers (at the end of the season, I didn't read C. Dale's blog for a week until I could watch the finale), so here is a very big SPOILER caution right now. I'm going to dive into the mess of Spider-Man 3 and you are warned if you want to avoid any details of the movie being ruined. Here goes.

Despite some truly spectacular action scenes, some of the best and most exciting I've seen, Spidey 3 is, no doubt about it, almost unbelievably lame. Before this began to be apparent, the first ten minutes or so I wanted to cry, seeing Mary Jane and Peter on a web watching the night sky, the shooting stars. O redheads. Soon, though, the movie is meandering, checking in with the gang, and this is ok, but the feeling is of undeniable aimlessness. Soon, there's an awesomely dizzying fight between Peter and Harry, who is now the Green Goblin, and in this fight Harry is injured, losing his memory to a certain degree. He forgets his hatred for Peter and grooves around completely blissed out. Which is kind of cute and funny. Meanwhile, Peter and MJ are estranged due to an Idiot Plot. Peter finds out information which calls into question his entire ethos as a hero and continues to push MJ away. The black suit comes into play through one of 8000 contrivances and suddenly your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is your Completely Not Believably Lecherous Though Pretty Much A Dickhead Spider-Man. Peter combs his hair down in his eyes, his new superpower apparently the ability to be so totally emo, and buys some crappy suit to jaunt through Manhattan checking out every woman passing by, giving her the finger-guns. This culminates in a scene that I swear is lifted from Anchorman, the jazz flute scene, except here Peter hops on stage to jam on the piano then dance across the table tops.

It shouldn't be a surprise to say that a weird hush had fallen over the audience.

Now, a different actor could probably have pulled off making Peter either believably sexy and dangerous or just plainly out of his fucking gourd, which I'm sure is the intent considering the black costume's malicious influence, but Tobey with his sleepy aspect and doughy face, his utterly sexless vibe, well, it just comes off as really, really weird. Soon, Peter comes to his senses, doffs the black suit, and isn't Creepy Robo-Playah anymore. The movie is back to watchable at this point, but aside from some great action set pieces never feels more than perfunctory or slapdash.

The transformation of Flint Marko into the Sandman is harrowing and haunting, even beautiful, but he's really only needed to show up and be Bad Guy. It's always pretty awesome but it never means anything: he says he just wants to help his dying daughter. Rather, he says it maybe twice. The rest of the time he's bored, I guess, making sand castles or burying himself in himself. Which sounds kind of dirty. Later, he teams up with Venom in an alley. I forget why. They go do stuff their mothers would disapprove of.

Battle is done and I think everybody cries. Peter does. Flint does. I am right now.