listen bud, he's got radioactive blood

"Spider-Man 3" got two thumbs down from "Roeper & Guest." They said it was partly because the new sequel was more campy than the last film. My daughter went to a midnight screening on Thursday night. She knew I would like the movie even though she thought it was a bit "cheesy." She was right. I saw it last night and enjoyed the comical scenes that bothered some critics. In one such scene, Peter Parker swaggers down the street on his way to get some new clothes. In another, he interacts with the maître d' of a fancy French restaurant.

I had feared that the filmmakers or the marketers had radically changed the tone for the third installment when I saw store shelves stocked with Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man dolls. Thankfully it wasn't a total kiddie movie. In a classic case of product placement, the Itsy-Bitsy dolls were shown during a crowd scene at a pro-Spider-Man rally.

Speaking of cheesy, my friend Richard Cheese has recorded a great lounge version of the Spider-Man theme. You can hear it at both his website and his MySpace page.