PLEASE NOTE: This is not a Pocket Reivew. I'm going to ask TheWife to PokeRev this one because I just have too much to complain about. WARNING: This review of
Spider-Man 3 is VERY R-Rated and should not be read by people who don't like foul language, graphic descriptions of unpleasant things (I'm looking at you, Mom!) or commentary that tears Sam Raimi a new one. Oh and don't read any further unless you are looking for a reason not to see this movie or would like to be warned away from seeing it if you'd rather not waste your time on a movie that should really have been much better. OK, here's the review: I haven't walked out of a movie since 1989. Usually I only review films that I've seen all the way through. BUT since I just couldn't stomach the entire thing, I walked out, leaving TheWife behind to sit through the rest of it. Obviously, she's easier to please than I am when it comes to movies. Now, the actual film that was used for the movie was not made of celluloid. The film stock used to shoot this movie was made with a special process that Sam Raimi has, indeed, perfected. Here's how it works. First, Sam Raimi ejaculates onto a metal anvil, like the kind they pound swords on to make them really flat. Instead, the anvil is heated and the semen is pounded on with a hammer until it's a flat, transparent, and very brittle film. Then, thousands of immigrant workers are hired on Raimi's Hollywood estate to poke the sprocket holes into it. Once this process is done, and only when it is done, is Sam Raimi ready to start shooting! However, before shooting can commence, contrary to what many Hollywood producers think, you need a script! Now, to write the script, good old Sam used regular old paper, but the ink (the INK!) was what made the script to
Spider-Man 3 different! You see, before printing the script out, he took a wide paint spatula and shoved it up his ass, scraping the decades old left over fecal matter from inside his rectum and then mixed it with more of his semen. He then took the decades old fecal mixture and had it poured (this time by Chinese sex slaves) into ink jet cartridges he then used to print out his beloved script. You want to know how I know all of this? Because the script is shit and watching the movie made me feel like Sam Raimi was masturbating all over me. Now for some actual meat--be warned spoilers abound and believe me, you'll thank me for exposing everything I'm about to expose. Let's see how many subplots there are! 1) Peter and MJ life on the rocks--MJ deals with being a sucky actor and Peter deals with being a successful super-hero. 2) Flint Marko escapes from prison, where he was sent for some sort of robbery, though police now believe he was the real killer of Uncle Ben. 3) Harry, Peter's best buddy from high school is taking over for his dead dad as the Green Goblin, only he's not wearing any cool goblin mask, he's just wearing a kind of robotic, CG ski mask. 4) Eddie Brock, is a sleaze bucket photojournalist trying to muscle in on Peter's turf as the Bugle's official Spidey-picture-getter. 5) A meteorite just happens to crash near Peter and MJ one night in central park and a black little goo follows them home, eventually jumping on Peter, replacing his costume and making him evil, EVIL! Or really just Emo-Spidey--complete with gothy hairstyle and eye-liner. Now, five plots is a lot for brilliant filmmakers to deal with. How much you want a bet that I don't consider Sam to be up there with David Lean? HOLY CHRIST, this movie was a mess. No sooner did you think one character was the lead when another character came along and completely stole the focus away from the previous lead character. In the opening few scenes everything was so idyllic that it was nauseating. Then the meteorite hits the ground just yards away from whom we think are our lead characters. The goo slurps out of the meteorite and for some reason that wasn't explained before I walked out of the theater, jumped onto the back of Peter's moped. Does the costume attack Peter and MJ then? NOPE. Peter drops MJ off and visits Aunt May to tell her he's going to propose to MJ. He gets back on the moped and STILL no black goo attack. Then, literally out of nowhere, the plot takes a violent left turn as Harry, flying on one of his dad's flying snowboards, snatches Peter from the back of his moped. For the next ten minutes we're treated to an absurdly complicated chase/fight sequence that, like the rest of the plot, starts off by focussing on Peter (still out of costume, mind you) but then suddenly shifts to Harry, where it stays for most of the chase. Why hang with the bad guy when we care about the good guy? Beats me. Remember? The script is shit. Then we've got the Gwen Stacy plot stapled in there, too. I'm not sure where it goes, so I'll just jump to Sandman next. So, here's Thomas Haden Church putting in the best performance of the film (or at least what I could stomach of the film). He plays Flint Marko who is a very sympathetic dad who stole money to help his daughter get medical treatment. He has broken out of jail and when cops chase him, he "accidentally" stumbles upon some random, completely unexplained physics experiment that turns him into sand. The scene where he rebuilds his body out of sand was really neat, actually. Sadly, it was such obvious plot machinery (it was only there to make the plot go and was never adequately explained) that I just shook my head. Luckily for the movie, I now cared more for Sandman than I did for Peter, or MJ or Harry. Meanwhile, Peter has brought Harry to a hospital for treatment after Harry bonked himself on the head during that Harry-centered chase sequence. Harry now has amnesia and can't remember that he hates Peter or that Peter is Spider-Man. Harry smiles, he is happy for the first time in a movie-and-a-half. His smile makes the audience I saw the movie with laugh nervously. OK, now I can't remember what happens next--as you can tell, there's no real throughline. At some point, Aunt May and Peter are called to the police station to be told the news that it turns out the guy who Peter thought killed his Uncle Ben didn't, it was Sandman. This causes Peter to start having nightmares about the guy who really killed his dad-figure. Forget the concern that if this is true it upsets the very core of why Peter Parker is Spider-Man. (See, Spidey let a thief get away with money. The thief would later kill his uncle--Peter had the power to stop a bad guy but didn't. Of course, if that bad guy
didn't kill his uncle, then his choice to not get involved in stopping the thief wasn't as bad a choice as it initially was, taking the steam out of him being a hero). So, while Peter's having nightmares (he's sleeping in his costume for some reason), the black goo from the meteorite makes a return appearance. We watch as it leaps on top of him and slowly slithers all around him. Finally, he wakes up, hanging from a building in a costume that looks like a gray version of his regular red-and-blues. This costume is the least cinematic costume of all time. There's nothing less inspiring than watching a gray blob swing from webs around New York City. The thing is, when he wears the black costume it changes his personality. In the comic, it just made him more aggressive, in the movie, it makes him a douche bag. Literally, he starts coming on to every chick on the street, he's randomly dancing around on the sidewalk, and he's got an emo-hairstyle. OH and he's got eye-liner on now. Think Superman 3, only less realistic. OH yeah and then there's his lab partner in college, Gwen Stacy, who just happens to be a model that Spidey saves (earlier) when she falls from a skyscraper. Turns out her dad is the chief of police and so the CoP decides to give Spidey a parade and the key to the city. However, once Spidey has his black costume on (even though it's really gray), he goes after Sandman whom he defeats after an absurdly unrealistic fight scene culminating in a blast of water that washes Sandman away. Gee, Sandman's weakness is water. I never would have guessed. Meanwhile, Harry's gotten his memory back and tells MJ that if she doesn't break it off with Peter he'll kill her and Peter. She does what he says and dumps Peter. Now in the black costume again, he decides to be really slimy and asks out Gwen and takes her to the jazz bar MJ works at now as a sing waitress. See, he's being a dick. In the jazz bar, MJ is asked by one of the members of the jazz band to come up and sing. Before she can emit a single note, Peter jumps up and starts playing music and singing. Then he's dancing. This is where I walked out. This movie is utter shit, through and through. Sam Raimi should be ashamed of himself and he should be forced to go back to film school. He used to be a good storyteller. Hell, I really liked the first Spider-Man film. While I didn't care for the second Spidey film, this new one makes Spidey 2 look like
The Bridge On the River Kwai. It was such a total mess and the plot machinery was so incredibly obvious and overt I was embarrassed for the people who made this movie but somehow didn't get that the movie was so unbelievably retarded. Seriously, the plot machinery was so bad--from the meteor landing and chasing Peter home but not doing anything until the plot called for it to do something, the random calls from Doc Conner explaining what the goo is, to Sandman showing up at just the slow moments in the plot. OH damn and I totally forgot to mention how insipid Topher Grace was as Eddie Brock. I mean, what the hell? This guy was a total sleaze bag loser. And, compared to Sandman, I wondered why/how he could be such a weak character. But I didn't care. This movie had Peter Parker
singing and dancing and being a general douche to people. That, on top of the multiple plot lines that made
Short Cuts seem tight and concise, and the random, out of place, humor (which I forgot to mention), this movie is just shit. I go so far as to say it's shit with corn in it. Stay away from this movie. Don't even watch as much as I did. You'll need a whole box of Kleenex to get the cinematic cum off of you. Bleh... gross... I'm going to go shower and tomorrow I'm going to go down to the LA Free Clinic and get tested--I want to make sure I didn't catch any STDs from
Spider-Man 3.
Orignal From:
ThePete's R Rated Review of Spider Man 3
No comments:
Post a Comment