It's Spider-Man 3 week. David Edelstein of New York Magazine writes,
What’s missing? Momentum. A touch of meanness. A centrifugal threat like Molina’s octopus man. (In terms of dramatic stature, the three villains here don’t add up to one Doc Ock.) The script, by Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent, wears its heart on its web: It pointlessly revises the murder of Peter’s uncle so he can forgive the new culprit, and gives nothing new to J. K. Simmons, whose once hilarious snarling editor is now a tiresome fellow. I lost count of the number of times Dunst plunges from a building during the climax—enough to make you think, Put her on the ground or let her fall! It’s fun to see Raimi stalwart Bruce Campbell channel Peter Sellers’s Clouseau, but apart from the Sandman and the nightclub dance, my favorite thing in the movie is when a rejected Peter fishes an engagement ring out of a Champagne glass with a fork: small, poetic, perfect.
Anthony Lane of The New Yorker has even tougher review:
Laziness mingles with overkill, violence with mawkishness: most of the characters weep at the slightest provocation, but heads are beaten, burned, and sheared off by passing subway trains. “People really like me,” our hero says at the start, adding later, “They love me!” Not for long, Whiny-Man, not for long.
Variety critic Todd McCarthy also had bad things to say about this film. It's Spider-Man, so negative reviews may not matter, but still . . .
