The lovefest for Spider-Man 3 as a moneymaker -- and as nothing but a moneymaker -- continues. Turns out the movie didn't make $148 million in North America alone this past weekend: it made $151 million. Yea! Hoorah! Everyone's happy!

Not quite. Plenty of fanboys -- and fangirls, like this one -- are less than pleased with the new installment in the Peter Parker saga. (It's too cartoony. It's got too many villains. It's got too many dance numbers. It wastes Venom and the Green Goblin. These are some of the complaints.) It's at a bare 61 percent Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which means critics aren't crazy about it either. And now I have actually documented anecdotal evidence that ordinary, non-geek moviegoers aren't so tickled, either.

See, I was at a party on Sunday, where I met lots of cool new people, and what invariably happens in situations like this is that when cool people hear I'm a film critic, they instantly want the scoop on all the hot new flicks. But the way questions about Spidey 3 were posed was highly intriguing. How often are the good Spider-Man and the evil Spider-Man together onscreen? Do they battle each other? Where did the evil Spidey get the black suit? I was mystified ... I tried to explain that there aren't two Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?), just one, and that he's battling his dark side. It's a metaphor, not an actual evil twin. "So those posters are misleading?" one of my new friends asked. "When they're back to back, the good Spider-Man and the bad one? They don't actually meet?" I had to concede that yes, I suppose, all those posters are misleading. There were general scowling and noises of disapproval and the conversation moved on. And I knew that these folks -- the kind of moviegoers who don't run out the first weekend to see the latest blockbuster but wait until the second or third, when the crowds are smaller, and when they've gotten the thumbs-up from their friends -- were never going to see Spider-Man 3 at a multiplex.

And then there was this: Just walking down the streets of Manhattan yesterday, I overheard a conversation among three 30ish guys dressed in business attire, clearly not huge geeks but interested in some geeky things. One guy was explaining to his friends that "he only wears the black suit for like seven minutes! Mostly he just wears the red suit!" Again: much grumbling of disapproval. The friends were not happy to hear this news of the relative nonevilness of Spider-Man, and the guy so unhappy with the movie? You can believe that he won't be seeing it again.

I don't like to make box-office predictions, so I'm not gonna pick a number, but I bet we see Spidey taking a huge drop at the multiplex next weekend. It'll still win the weekend (only 28 Weeks Later has anywhere near the same kind of appeal for audiences, but it's tough to see that one taking the prize), but by a much slimmer margin.

And then we'll have to endure the money people worrying about why the film took such a slide, as if it weren't perfectly obvious.

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