Punch me -- I bleed repetitive clichés

I should preface this by saying that me critiquing TV shows makes as much sense as Stevie Wonder railing against sloppily-drawn modern art, but I'm going to try anyway. I've recently found the two best TV shows I've ever had the good fortune of watching, and they were on video: "Freaks and Geeks" (which got rave reviews and was canceled due to poor ratings after one season) and "Band of Brothers" (which was a miniseries and wasn't available to anyone besides HBO subscribers). As a condescending snob who likes to hear himself talk, I'm somewhat appalled that inane reality shows and sitcoms draw Nielsen points on a consistent basis while anything with character and variety is either relegated to pay-only networks or canned altogether. It's kind of sad, but I think the average viewer is content with clichés, stereotypes and dumb jokes because it makes for predictable, easy-to-digest entertainment. Yeah, I thought of that one all by myself.\nThat's okay, though -- Fox can premiere a new show called "Who Wants to Examine My Prostate," and I'll probably never be affected by it (nor will I even hear about it), mostly because I'm too lazy to consistently watch anything besides list after list of the best lists ever on VH1. However, I'm going to don my black-framed glasses of pretense and rail against America's hunger for formulaic repetition because even as a TV hermit, I've seen its effects on my precious, precious movies: "Spider-Man 2," which is based off a comic I loved as a kid, is the worst movie I have ever seen. \nIt starts in your gut when you see Spider-Man swinging around New York delivering pizzas (and stealing back that errant slice from the freeloading balcony man) -- you know this movie is going to be ridiculous. You suffer through such gems as 30 unnecessary seconds of mops falling out of a closet onto hapless Peter Parker to the point that you get it confused with the "Saturday Night Live" skit where spotlights, cameras and pianos fall on Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth's head. I know some of it was meant to be a parody, but slapstick and sight gags can't carry a movie, especially not a movie with dialogue so painful and contrived.\nIn case you don't want to spend $7, the movie's theme is "You must give up your dreams to face the life you have." I know this because it was more or less stated exactly that way by Aunt May -- movies can be heavy-handed without ever stating its themes directly (I mean, they never said "growing up means killing your family dog" in "Old Yeller," though that is so obviously the movie's main point), but when they do in fact have them said aloud, it's about as subtle of a lesson as when my dad puts the lawnmower on top of my car as to indicate that something needs to be done about the grass. I don't know about you, but I go to movies to watch Icelandic chanteuses burst out in song whilst strapped to the electric chair, not to receive life lessons from Spider-Man's extended family.\nWhat else have I learned from "Spider-Man 2?" Well, I've learned that if you make out with a girl while hanging upside down, she'll leave her astronaut fiancé to frantically run through New York in a wedding dress to get to your house. I've also learned that you can avoid paying your rent indefinitely if you eat chocolate cake with your Russian landlord's anorexic daughter in bizarre non-sequitur scenes added to lengthen a film. Also, if you throw your damaged superhero mask off the back of an MTA train, small children in the front of the train will still manage to catch it and return it to you (symbolizing your commitment to the small children of the world).\nMost importantly, however, I have learned that I should become a screenwriter, because it's obviously the easiest and least-demanding job in Hollywood save for giving Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen piggyback rides. Seriously, if a screenwriter can get away with writing lines like "I'm human! Punch me -- I bleed," they shouldn't be writing for the screen anymore. The fact that this movie has gotten such rave reviews has frightened me even more -- it must honestly come back to the whole "Freaks and Geeks" point, that movies and shows with multifaceted characters cause audiences to work too hard, and as a result writers and directors have realized that it's a lot more lucrative to give the audience easy-to-digest packages of stock characters and predictable events.\nDo I sound worked-up and indignant? I hope so -- you don't have to be a mouth-breathing comic troll to appreciate the amount of work that goes into developing the "universe" inside a long-running comic, and I think that to gloss over all the work that has been done to make Spider-Man a unique character in the 39 years that the comic has been running in order to make a totally bitchin' movie where stuff falls on Tobey Maguire's head and J. Jonah Jameson is, like, such a jerk is just obscene. I can't even cite Spider-Man comics, so I can only imagine what a real fan's reactions would be.\nI guess my expectations are just too high, but it doesn't seem like I'm asking a whole lot to want believable, non-stock characters in films that go beyond laugh-tracks of stuff falling on people. In the meantime, punch me -- it might cause brain damage and make "Spider-Man 3" more enjoyable.