So I saw Spiderman 3 last night

***Gah! I wondered why no one was commenting and then I realized that I'd accidentally blocked people from being able to make comments! How could I do that??? I live for comments! I'm sorry! Please, please make some!***

I don't usually do the whole "midnight showing on the day it comes out" thing, on account of I'm normal. I also don't wear a cape and blue Hanes underwear on the outside of my tights for the same reason. Which is more than I could say for some of the young men there that night. I went because some friends were going and I decided to try living a little as a way to stave off wrinkles and menopause.

Only here's the thing. I haven't read the reviews yet (except for one small one) but this was not my favorite Spiderman movie. I'll do the good things first, though.

Good things:

Opening credits. They were awesome. I want to see them again.

That hot Harry Osborn gets amnesia and morphs back into a normal, happy human being for a while and is all cute and funny and grinny with the crinkly eyes. I enjoyed that. He has a lovely smile, as it turns out.

Topher Grace. I love him even when he is playing a bad guy and has freaky sharp teeth. He's just that snarky an' cute.

There were some really good moments of Spiderman being pretty awful and cruel. They were impressive.

The Sandman's story is sad and sweet and he made me cry and I was never actually mad at him.

Now, bad things:

That movie was forever long, and they could have cut out some stuff. Watch out for the omelet-making scene that lasts like 15 minutes while you're sitting there thinking, "The heck? It's an omelet! Move along, people!"

There was some sloppy writing--people said and did completely unlikely things (or didn't say or do the natural, reasonable thing) just so that the story would go where the writers wanted it to. Look for the "Meh, it's probably just a bird" line as an example.

So Peter Parker turns all bad and evil and does horrible things, and then suddenly we have to watch 20 minutes of him strutting up and down the street being all dancey and cocky and silly like something out of Jim Carrey's The Mask to show that he's different now. That's when it kind of seemed like we were suddenly watching a completely different movie. It's true the Tobey Maguire cracked me up doing it, but I got more and more exasperated as it went on. "The crap!?! He just blew up Harry and broke up with MJ and we don't even know what's going on and bad things are happening out there and why is it that all we're seeing is Peter prancing up and down the street like a complete lurp???" It lacked focus.

The way you know Peter is being evil is because he starts looking like he's in a band--I swear I saw that hair on every goth teenager boy in the UK.

There were way too many villains and none of them got enough screen time. Thanks for that, Prancing Pony.

So MJ is this famous model-slash-actress and because of one bad review the only work she can find is as a singing waitress? I hope she doesn't actually pay that agent of hers.

The butler scene at the end: What. Freaking. Ever. Also, where was he with that information for the last 5 years, huh?? Another example of the slopping writing.

But do go see it, because there are lots of good parts. Just be prepared to sit there and wonder every now and then if the creative team is on drugs, and not the good kind.