“The three main recurring characters get stuck in a rut and the same can be said of the film itself in Spider-Man 3.”

A bad review from Variety is never a good thing, especially when the film in question is the big summer tent-pole. Todd McCarthy’s review takes aim at the film’s script, saying it resulted in “a story that would have provenmore satisfactory for a late ’60s cartoon-hero TV show than for a new-century blockbuster.” This is something I very much feared from some of the clips and trailers. The dialogue always appeared very stiff and badly written to me. But it’s not all bad. McCarthy praises Sandman as “a strange and visually interesting baddie endowed by Church with a melancholy undercurrent.” And at the end of the day, Variety is a trade paper which analyzes the industry. That said, McCarthy is quick to admit that the film’s “devaluation shouldn’t hurt at the box office.”

You can read the full review on Variety.com.