With great anticipation, this film had theaters opening hours earlier than normal. I caught the 9:45 AM showing at my local Edwards Theatre (and that was the 3rd screening of the day!).

Swinging from scene to scene with the agility of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man himself, the film ascends far above the standard action film. Each scene is carefully directed, scripted, shot. The characters are real, well-rounded and each involved in a particular unique real-ish circumstance. And what with a complicated web of romantic entanglement – it’s even almost soapy. The first act is beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and all of this before the plethora of special effects kick in.

Then, for comic relief, to lighten the emotional edge J.K Simmons cracks up the audience with his over-the-top caricature of the Daily Bugle Boss. Carrying the light-heartedness further scurries in Topher Grace who’s Peter Parker's photographer competition. Along the way seeds are planted creating curiosity, but it’s not until they sprout in the second hour that this whole magnificent orchestration comes tumbling down.

And what a mess it becomes. I’ll take a guess that producers felt that just one super-villain wasn’t enough – because they worked in two more (perhaps citing the “3” in the title of the film). Thomas Haden Church is a strong actor – he was great in Sideways, but the scripting here fails him. Further, the second surprise villain (who I won’t reveal here), takes an absurd turn for the worst which could have been handled so much better in the scripting. The most valid villain at the center of this story is obviously Harry. He’s the only one of the three with any depth of character. The only one working. It’s his struggle with his dark side that is so interesting. But, the script gets confused further when Peter takes a walk on the dark side as well. Unfortunately, the prelude to that walk is disproportionally underdeveloped. It could have been powerful, but it feels like a different film from the romantic open and a feeble second to Harry’s choices.

For all of these reasons the film flounders substantially for almost an entire hour. Loose ends begin to meet in the last twenty minutes culminating in a rather formulaic tie up and then an oddly off-mood resolution. All told, that first hour is something special and even amidst the mess of the second half, there is some great action to watch so I’ll average the film out at a B. (Both Spider-Man and Spider-Man2 scored higher.)

This film screened at an Edwards/Regal Cinema.

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