2 Thumbs Up

I really should have written my official review several days ago so everything would be fresh in my mind, but you know how it goes...laundry, school, laundry again, meals, triathlon training, thousands of other miscellanea that tend to bog me down, and then more laundry. So, here we go, finally.

First of all, I'd been anticipating the release of this movie for months. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point I developed an unhealthy preoccupation with Spiderman. Bubble Boy is aware of this fixation and while he doesn't overtly condone it, he hasn't held it against me too much (unlike my obsession with Gerard Butler, but that's another post for another day). Opening weekend comes and I schedule a sitter for bright and early Sunday morning. Yes, a hot movie date for 9:30 Sunday morning. This seemed like a good idea before we had friends over Saturday night who honored us with pomegranate mojitos (so you can kill free radicals and brain cells simultaneously!) and we ate "white devil" enchiladas. Holy man, those were spicy. 9:30 came very early and we dragged our haggard bodies to the theater. I was disappointed that 2 people made it into the theater before us...just by a few steps, but still....I wanted to be FIRST. Having recovered from that letdown we settled in to get in the right frame of mind for the movie. Bubble Boy and I disagree in which row the "sweet spot" is to be found in a movie theater and he wanted to sit WAY too close. He is quite the expert on All-Things-Electronic, but since it was MY movie I got to decide where we'd sit, which ended up being right in the middle, mid-way up.

I won't get into the details, but what I will say is that basically, I enjoyed the movie. It was definitely entertaining. I just can't help but feel that I could have enjoyed it more. I've decided that 3 villains is just too many for Spiderman to beat the hell out of in one movie. Between Goblin Jr., Sandman, and Venom (who barely squeezes into the last 15 minutes of the movie although he is truly venomous and awfully evil), plus Spidey's own internal demons exacerbated by the mysterious black Moon Goo (love the black suit, though), and Mary Jane's personal problems, it just felt all over the place.

Plus, there were three things that really bothered me. First, Spiderman is swinging through the town rushing to an incident when the gratuitous shot of him jumping in front of a GIGANTIC American flag waving triumphantly across the entire movie screen is thrust in front of me and rammed down my throat. Now, I know I risk being called "unpatriotic" and maybe if someone wants to get really nasty, "liberal". But, please. It was unnecessary and borderline grotesque in it's jingoism.
Second, Spiderman never saves a lot of people. Remember when the Goblin drops the cable car full of screaming people and Mary Jane and Spidey saves them BOTH? Or when he nearly kills himself stopping the speeding train from plummeting over the end of the tracks? I want to see the magnitude of his heroism by him saving large numbers of people from catastrophe. Nothing even close.
Third, WAY TOO MUCH CRYING. Now, I love to see the vulnerable human side of a superhero as much as anyone else, but for the Love of Pete! Between Peter, Harry, Mary Jane and even the Sandman, it was Cryfest '07 and that's just not what I'm hoping for in a superhero comic book movie.

All that said, I still give it 2 thumbs up. I'm not one of those fair-weather fans who will abandon the team when they don't live up to their full potential. No, I'll be there when "4" opens, ready to see what lies in store for Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson and Spiderman.