About two weeks ago, I caught Spiderman 3 at the cheap seats.
Of all the superhero movies that keep vomiting forth from Hollywood, I think the Spiderman trilogy [and it better be a trilogy — I don’t want to see it wear out its welcome with a 4th, 5th, 6th, ad nauseam] is the best. Each entry in the franchise balances the nerdly affections of Peter Parker with the video-game dazzle of Spiderman. The awkwardly maturing love between Peter and MJ, as well as the familial bonds between Peter and his guardians, anchor the punch-’em-up spectacles and give them more resonance.
Overall, Spiderman 3 stays airborne. Sure, it does have way too many bugs in its web: not just the Sandman, but Venom AND Goblin Jr. AND the space goo…not just MJ but also Gwen Stacy. And sure, it does hit a wrong note with Peter’s silly boogeying bad-boy routine, an interlude of sheer tonal stupidity in an otherwise well-modulated film. In general, though, the movie sustains a somber, reflective tone as the characters realize they aren’t as good as they think they are [Peter not so good as a boyfriend, MJ not so good as a singer, the Sandman not so good as a protective dad, Venom not so good as a photographer] and then…well, they learn to live with that.
For a movie with larger-than-life conflicts and villains, the message of Spiderman 3 is rather resigned, realistic, even small-scale and a bit…middle-aged in its perspective. I really have no complaints about that. I enjoy watching people in movies age and learn like the rest of us. That way, the head-bonking and bone-crunching action scenes make me wince more…because I can imagine real people inside the supersuits, sustaining believable, harsh injuries.
On the other hand, I saw Blades of Glory last night.
Boy, was it flaccid. That’s the one with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure skaters paired in a last attempt to win the gold. Ferrell’s strutting buffoonery and Heder’s lackadaisical mockery may be fine in small doses, but they can’t sustain a movie, either singly or together, because they simply aren’t funny. They aren’t funny because they have limited schtiks beyond which they cannot expand. And they aren’t funny because they can’t rise to the occasion.
C’mon, people — it’s a movie about figure skating; it DEMANDS hyperbolic narration, crotch-defying choreography, enough glittery costumes to give you hives and more sexual subtext than you can shake a vibrator at. Instead, the script just tosses out a few silly similes for its skating announcers, lets its stars skate in the most earthbound, uninteresting way possible, confines the glitter to Ferrell and Heder only [when it should be EVERYWHERE IN SCADS] and takes only the laziest homo-panic potshots without any cleverness whatsoever. As much as I hate Borat for being terminally stupid, at least it dared to head into offensive territory for some gay jokes. I think Blades of Glory should have followed Borat’s lead there.
On the plus side, the costume design was pretty cool. On the minus side, it was nowhere near fabulous.