Let the summer movie race begin as the web-slinging Spider Man comes back for a third (and possible final) time. It’s pretty hard to top the stellar first two installments of this series; but the third movie goes for broke and comes up just a little short of the first two, but still very entertaining.

The third chapter begins as Peter Parker (Maguire) is still excelling in college and struggling to make ends meet in New York City. He’s planning on proposing to girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (Dunst), who is getting her first shot at a Broadway play. In between watching his woman in her play, Parker must get into his alter ego to take on his former best friend latest super villain Harry Osborn (Franco). But in the third installment, his former friend is the least of his problems; Parker must worry about petty thief Flint Marko (Church) transforming into the mammoth villain the Sandman and rival photographer Eddie Brock (a hit or miss Topher Grace).

Whew, does that sound like a lot of plot to burn through in 150 minutes or what?

Let’s just get my criticism of Spidey 3 out of the way first. With that past paragraph; this reviewer just touched on the tip of the iceberg as far as the plot is concerned. There are various other storylines going on (such as the reopening of Uncle Ben Parker’s murder case and Harry’s amnesia for half the movie) that makes your head spin at times. With past Spider Man’s, we’ve had a one on one battle between Spider Man and his foes. In Spidey 3; three villains seems like too much and didn’t leave as much time for plot development as the last two movies.

But the movie still gets a good amount of character development in; with the conflict of Harry’s love/hate relationship with Peter; Mary Jane’s struggles as she tries to make it, and the backstory behind the Sandman’s character. The most interesting and entertaining storyline is Peter’s struggle with using revenge as motivation, and adopts a more cocky and testy attitude, compared to the quiet and timid Peter Parker in past movies.

Maguire has played Parker to perfection in the three movies; even if he looks a little goofy in a goth-lite look for a small portion of the flick. It’s very refreshing to see Franco as the carefree and happy Harry for some of the film, compared to the sour, vengeful Harry we’ve seen through Spider Man 2. Church is good as the somber Sandman/Marko, but this reviewer can never shake the vision of Church as anything but the dim-witted Lowell from the TV show Wings. Same thing with Grace; he will always be Eric Foreman from That 70’s Show, even if he gets a few funny lines in this movie.

Dunst and Bryce Dallas Howard (as Parker’s potential love interest Gwen Stacy) are fine in their roles, even if Dunst spends most of the time crying throughout Spider Man 3. Director Sam Raimi has done another fine job with the third movie, but one also thinks that this movie could have been two separate movies. Spider Man just became Grindhouse!

Even with the sarcasm, Spider Man 3 is destined to one of the biggest movies this summer and even with the numerous subplots going on, provides closure to many of those plots and makes a Spider Man 4 completely unnecessary.

GRADE: B