Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I am currently praying every day that EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS and REIGN OF FIRE end up playing a double feature at the Vineland Drive-In here in LA. I can’t picture a better way to see these monster movies than on a giant outdoor screen, curled up in the car with my girl. I’ve been looking for an excuse to go to that theater, anyway, and that would be ideal. The word on both of them so far seems to be that they’re fun audience-pleasers, and here’s a new review for the David Arquette comedy/thriller that seems pretty promising:
Hey Harry,
Sadly I've never had the opportunity to write to Aint-it-Cool, that is, until today! This morning I was invited to the Warner Bros. screening of Eight Legged Freaks, the new giant spider movie starring David Arquette and Kari Wurher.
I'll start with the trailers that were shown before the feature. We saw the trailer for the new Eddie Murphy comedy Pluto Nash. Nothing about this looks entirely exciting. Same old Eddie Murphy shtick, inserted in a new plot with some fancy shmancy special effects. Pass on that for me.
They followed up Nash with the new Harry Potter trailer, which was much longer than the initial teaser, with plenty of new footage. I don't know if they've released it elsewhere yet. It was pretty decent. The kids look a little more comfortable and so does the direction. Lets just hope the special effects have improved a little too. I guess Warners were pretty confident that we'd like the trailer cuz they played it again as soon as it ended. Not complaining here though.
The last trailer was for Fear Dot Com. I haven't heard much about this one, but it seems to be some sort of techno-thriller/serial killer scenario. People start dying after logging on to said website. Could be interesting, definitely had some nice atmosphere.
But anyways, on to the movie. Weird as it may sound, the movie is bookended by closeups of Doug E. Doug's teeth. Not entirely pretty. What follows is the obligatory setup: We meet the characters, the local sheriff, played by Kari, and her two children (the girl is played by Scarlett Johanssen from Ghost World....glad to see "critical acclaim" hasn't stopped her from making fun movies). All the regular small-town local yokel characters are present: the bumbling deputy, the salty old woman, the dumb jock teenage boys, the asshole real-estate developer, and other miscellaneous hicks. The only other noteable characters are David Arquette, who returns to town for no apparent reason other than to romance former flame Ms. Wurher...and Doug E. Doug's conspiracy spouting radio host.
The setup takes a little while, actually maybe about 10 minutes longer than it probably should, and then it gets around to what we've all been waiting for....giant mutant man-eating spiders. They generally don't disappoint either. The special effects are great, and even though everyone's running around all panicky, in the back of your mind you know their having a ball. The filmmakers are obviously attempting to re-create the B-movie feel, and at times they really nail it. Nice tongue-in-cheek touches, such as a nod to HG Wells "War of the Worlds" were great. The whole time I felt like I was watching a cartoon for grownups. It was like the director said to the cast and FX guys "do whatever the hell you want! Let's party!"
The tone is definitely campy, and other than a few jump moments, there's not much to be afraid of. This is probably why I was able to forgive some of the bad BAAAD acting. Yes, David Arquette is goofy and loveable but a master thespian he is not. I wondered some of the time if it was intentional, but in the end it doesn't matter. I could have done without the Doug E. Doug character. Rants on "anal probes" were funny about 10 years ago, sorry guys. But at the end of the day, all that matters is spider violence, and we get tons of that.
My only other complaint is the ending. The climax just doesn't feel as tense as it should, or elaborate. Maybe I'm just spoiled. Maybe they ran out of money. It wasn't disappointing, but it wasn't like "wow!" either. As a whole, the movie is great though. Finally something REALLY fun. Movies like this don't get made nearly enough. There is absolutely no pretention here...just good old B-movie shlock.
Go see it. Bring a date. Scream! SCREAM IN TERROR!
You can call me Donnie Darko.
