An actress of Harris' ability, asked to deliver a one-note performance, and that single note is fretting.Get one taste of the Sichuan delicacies at Café China, nestled in the heart of midtown, and you understand why the restaurant has earned a Michelin star. You know a movie is in trouble when the climactic romantic scene of the entire series is stolen by the waiter ( Bruce Campbell). And saints deliver us from another dinner date like the one where Peter plans to propose to Mary Jane. Too many villains, too many pale plot strands, too many romantic misunderstandings, too many conversations, too many street crowds looking high into the air and shouting "oooh!" this way, then swiveling and shouting "aaah!" that way. While Peter goes through a period of microorganism infection, he combs his hair forward, struts the streets, attracts admiring glances from every pretty girl on the street, and feels like hot stuff. But the damsel in distress this time was not Mary Jane but Gwen Stacy ( Bryce Dallas Howard), the sexy blond lab partner Peter has somehow neglected to mention to Mary Jane, causing her heartbreak because at a civic ceremony he kisses her with our kiss, i.e., the upside-down one. I liked the collapsing construction crane sequence. Yes, there are some nice special effects in the movie. And then Peter and Harry have a fist fight when they should be doing Spidey and Goblin stuff. While the first GG had the usual supervillain motivations (malevolence, envy, twisted abilities) his son is merely very angry and under the misapprehension that Peter/Spidey murdered his old dad. So how do fake Spideys like Venom gain their powers when they are covered with the black substance? And how does a microorganism from outer space know how to replicate the intricate patternwork of the Spidey costume, right down to the chest decoration? And to what purpose from an evolutionary point of view? And what good luck that the microorganism gets Peter's rival photographer, Eddie Grace, to infect, so that he becomes Venom! And how does Eddie know who he has become?Īnother villain is Harry Osborn, a k a the New Green Goblin ( James Franco), son of the interesting original ( Willem Dafoe) but not a drip off the old gob. We know that Spider-Man's powers do not reside in his red suit, which lies in a suitcase under his bed. They not only coat people with a way-cool black glossy second skin, but specialize in spray-painting Spidey and Spidey wannabes. Then it produces little black beasties that look like squids crossed with licorice rope. It arrives on Earth in a meteorite that lands, oh, maybe 20 yards from Peter and Mary Jane, but this impact somehow escapes notice by the fabled Spidey-sense. Then there is the black microorganism from outer space, which is not a villain, but plays one in the movie. And how does he feel in there? Molina always let you know precisely how Doc Ock felt, with a vengeance. He can have holes blown into him with handguns, but then somehow regains the bodily integrity to hammer buildings. He forms from heaps of sand into a creature that looks like a snowman left standing too late in the season. Recall Doc Ock climbing buildings with his fearsome mechanical tentacles and now look at this dust storm. As an escaped con and the murderer of Uncle Ben, he has marginal interest at best. 3 we have too many villains, too little infamy. 2 had the superb Doc Ock ( Alfred Molina), who is right up there with Goldfinger and the Joker in the Supervillain Hall of Infamy. Superhero movies and Bond movies live and die by their villains. 14) met Peter Parker, she'd have him for breakfast. If there is a "Spider-Man 4" (and there will be), how about giving Peter and Mary Jane at least the emotional complexity of soap opera characters? If " Juno" (opening Dec. But if you are still dangling in taxicabs at age 20, you're a slow learner. The unique quality of the classic comic books was that their teenagers had ordinary adolescent angst and insecurity. If I argued earlier that Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were boring human beings, I had no idea how Peter would begin to wear on my nerves.Īnd what's with Mary Jane? Here's a beautiful, (somewhat) talented actress good enough to star in a Broadway musical, and she has to put up with being trapped in a taxi suspended 80 stories in the air by alien spider webs. But I made the mistake of declaring that was because "the movie demonstrates what's wrong with a lot of other superhero epics: They focus on the superpowers, and shortchange the humans behind them." This time, I desperately wanted Peter Parker to be short-changed. Faithful readers will recall that I found " Spider-Man 2" (2004) the best superhero movie since " Superman" (1978).
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