There's a point at which Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), under the influence of some strange, alien substance and a bit aggressive, accidentally hits Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) while being wrestled out of a restaurant where he's made an ass of himself. People in the audience cheered.

Now, I hardly condone hitting women, especially when you're a superhero, but it does suggest a larger disgust with the never-ending relationship problems with the whiny Mary Jane and the sulky Peter. This is a couple rather horribly mismatched in the emotion department as there doesn't seem to be a testicle between them.

Mary Jane opens the film in a Broadway play looking like the bride of Frankenstein and singing, perhaps coincidentally, not unlike Peter Boyle in "Young Frankenstein." She quickly loses that job because, well, she sucks, and the whining starts. She can't handle the criticism and she can't handle Peter's new obsession with popularity and fame, and frankly, Kirsten Dunst just sort of looks like that sneering girl in high school who everyone wanted to see fall down the stairs.

Believe it or not, "Spider-Man 3" isn't about Mary Jane. It's just that her whining is kind of like that screaming baby in the theater that won't shut up. Incidentally, she closes the film with a song and I definitely heard people in the audience muttering under their breath "dear God, nooo..." No, the film is about Peter Parker and his continued battle with his dark side.

This film has three villains, which is two villains too many, if you ask me. There's Harry Osbourne (James Franco) who takes over as the New Goblin. There's Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), whose solution to helping his dying daughter is to steal stuff, beat up cops, and look very conflicted while doing it all. Then there's Venom (Topher Grace), who starts out as Eddie Brock, a photographer competing with Peter at the newspaper.

Three villains and a two hour and twenty minute movie exploring Peter's feelings is a movie that's doing way too much. Spider-Man battles his friend, Harry, first, and we're treated to a ridiculous memory loss sequence whose only function is to delay the New Goblin's return to the plot at a time when it's more convenient for the story. I spent a lot of the first 90 minutes of "Spider-Man 3" looking at my watch.

Aspirations are one thing. Boring the crap out of people is quite another. In fact, "Feelings" would have been an apt theme song for this tear-filled movie as the last half an hour or so contains more weeping and crying than any superhero movie in the history of cinema. I think the only character who never looked weepy was Venom. Every other character is bawling at any given moment.

I mean, Jesus Christ, this is "Spider-Man 3" not "Fried Green Tomatoes 3."