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Our hero never dons a codpiece and the closest you'll get to Spidey-nipples is revisiting Kirsten Dunst's wet, clinged-to cleavage in the 2002 original.
But Spider-Man 3, at turns cluttered and campy, finds Peter Parker vexed by not one, but two, men in black -- the ebony-outfitted Venom and the nattily-attired director Sam Raimi who, seemingly possessed by a sinister symbiote himself, has allowed his own worst instincts to consume him for this energetic but disappointing three-quel.
The good news? Raimi never demands Tobey Maguire do the Batusi.
The bad news? Spider-Man 3 offers multiple dance numbers. Take that, Batman and Robin.
The resulting mish-mash -- as opposed to the droll perfection of Spider-Man 2 -- attempts to juggle the angst of Peter Parker's personal life with senses-tingling spectacle. This time out, though, Raimi is not nearly so nimble.
Picking up where the previous film ended, this especially extravagant episode finds Parker, for once, flying high. His costumed alter-ego is no longer a loathed criminal, but a beloved hero -- he's even a tourist attraction for the city of New York. Personally, he is about to ask life-long love Mary Jane Watson (Dunst) to marry him.
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But as his fame has ballooned, so has his ego and Raimi, quite smartly, brings on a trio of villains who reflect, in varying ways, Parker's own crisis of personality and conscience.
There's new Green Goblin Harry Osborn (James Franco), who still blames Spider-Man for his father's demise; Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), a felon who, after a run-in with a molecular accelerator, morphs into the monstrous Sandman; and lastly, when a meteorite crashes nearby Parker, it unleashes an alien symbiote that bonds itself to its new host, magnifying Spider-Man's darkest characteristics.
In between revelations and elaborate action sequences (the best of which is a dizzying skyscraper rescue), characters are introduced, then forgotten. Gwen Stacy (Bryce Howard Dallas), recipient of the aforementioned rescue, barely registers; James Cromwell, as her police chief father, doesn't. Even Topher Grace as Eddie Brock -- Parker's Daily Bugle rival and later mortal nemesis Venom -- receives short-shrift. No surprise, really, given all that Raimi tries to cram in.
Yet, for all the webbing on-screen, only the relationship between Parker and Mary Jane -- Maguire and Dunst remain genuinely appealing -- sticks. Even when Parker succumbs to the dark side, Raimi plays it largely for laughs. (Evil Peter is as scary as a member of Fall Out Boy.) Spider-Man 3 isn't a bad film -- many scenes, taken on their own, are thrilling and even moving -- but it indicates a downward spiral that leaves you not wanting to see what's in store for Spider-Man 4, but rather, dreading it.
(This film is rated PG)