Spider-Man 3

we (me and carloads of my officemates) watched Spider-man 3 last night. as expected, the theaters were packed with moviegoers who were eager to see the finale of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, although the crowd did not quite match the opening-day throng of the first 2 spiderman films.

basically it was good (with a $258m budget, it should be), far better than most films i'd seen. but as a follow-up to Spider-man 1 & 2, it fell a bit short of my expectations. it packed a statisfying emotional wallop, but at times it felt like the movie focused too much on Spidey's emotional side (it reminds of the last Superman movie, which frankly didn't impress me that much either). that's fine as it goes, but i was really hoping for a more seat-blasting bang from this last installment

i don't know. maybe it's just me. i just wished they poured as much attention to the baddies. as far as i'm concerned, none of the bad guys measured up to spider-man. it's almost like they were just tacked on as an afterthought rather than as a challenge to spider-man himself. you get the feeling that if spidey wasn't so hung up with his emotional issues, he'd have dispatched these guys with a careless flick of his wrist..

on the positive side, Stan Lee (Spidey's creator) actually spoke lines in this movie *beams*. as always, j.k. simmons who stars as Daily Bugle's editor (peter parker's irascible boss) JJ Jameson was a hoot. i laughed so hard in that office scene where his secretary kept 'buzzing' him. man, that was hilarious. he's actually one of my favorite characters in this franchise, and one of the main highlights of this film.