Maguire and Franco still seem to be enjoying themselves after all these years. You really miss Franco's easy-going nature when he's gone for too long. But the editing is so smartly paced that the second you want to see him, there he is.
The script keeps Maguire on the move, but part of the reason this movie sails along with such deceptive effortlessness is that he keeps finding energetic new gears to play this character. Peter began as an affable nerd whose powers shocked him. Then he became a cauldron of emo disaffection, wanting love but too meek and selfish to declare himself. Now he's on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to balance his emerging self-confidence, his intense affection for MJ, and the exhaustion of working two jobs that still keep him living in a dumpy apartment. (Crime may not pay, but from the looks of it neither does stopping it.) He keeps a police scanner beside his bed and has to face the possibility that Sandman may have killed his Uncle Ben. Throughout, Maguire makes it all look like the easiest acting he's ever done.
Raimi, who shares script credit with his brother Ivan and Alvin Sargent, strikes an exquisite balance between pop and woe, drama and whooshing adventure. The series has the shadows and demons of Tim Burton's two Batman films, but the sensibility is very comic book. Bill Nunn, Elizabeth Banks, and the rousing J.K. Simmons, as the implacable editor J. Jonah Jameson, resume their roles at the Daily Bugle where Peter works as a freelance photographer, giving the film a screwball zing.
This time Peter finds himself competing with an arrogant new hotshot, Eddie Brock (played by Topher Grace), whom Jameson will grant a staff job should he find incriminating photos of Spider-Man. With the new black suit – which, for Peter, becomes a freeing id – catching naughty Spidey could get easier.
This, by the way, is a movie of intense replacement and doubling. Grace is Maguire's lankier, more sardonic doppelganger. Like Peter, Harry discovers another self. Even Mary Jane gets an opposite number in Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), a blonde model whom Bad Peter starts seeing.
Describing Spider-Man 3 as busy is an understatement. It sets out to accomplish a lot, maybe too much: The film lasts well over two hours, and toward the climactic fight sequence fatigue starts to set in.
To their credit, though, Raimi and his big, hard-working crew are determined to dazzle (the budget is rumored to be almost US$300 million), even at the risk of bombarding us with pleasure, people, images, action, and real feeling. The movie has the curious effect of leaving you over-fulfilled. When it's done, any appetite for another event picture, even one half as well made as this, is temporarily curbed.
Don't get me wrong. Blockbusters with this much going on should come along more often. But they should also come with a doggie bag.
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