Arachnophobia (Along Came a Spider (DVD))

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Along Came a Spider (DVD)
Date:	03/01/02 (247 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pretty much everything, though it's not overlong, and the young girl isn't such a bad actress

Disadvantages: Plot, Characters, Script, Acting, Twists, Depiction of Internet, Lack of decent action, Make Up, Special effects generally

Now see what's happened. After seeing two decent Hollywood releases at the cinema, which restored my faith in mainstream filmmaking, I decided to chance renting one on video. Having read stunning enthusiasm for James Patterson's book 'Along Came A Spider' on here, and knowing that the film followed a successful adaptation of another of Patterson's books, 'Kiss The Girls', I felt I'd be reasonably safe with this.

I didn't expect too much, a reasonably involving story, some good acting from Morgan Freeman, a few twists, and a decent conclusion. What I didn't expect was the appalling mishmash of contrived plot turns, uninvolving and unconvincing characters and dialogue, and somnambulant acting that this film threw at me. This film is unrepentant garbage, spewing out ridiculous implausible twists, one after another - those plot diversions that the audience hasn't spotted before the film's main characters are so unlikely as to beggar belief.

You see, what I didn't know was that James Patterson is, as Robert Wilonsky of the NYLA Times puts it, "to writing what Frank Sinatra was to feminism". This analogy makes a whole lot more sense when you've watched this shambolic mess of a movie, but hey, perhaps I should leave the criticism until I've told you about the plot... then I can dissect the movie in a more sustained way.

THE PLOT (God help us all)

As the film opens, we see detective Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) watch as his partner plunges to her doom over the edge of a dam, while working under cover. Cross blames himself, and is very upset (though you'd probably not get that impression from Freeman's acting in this movie - sorry, I'll leave off the criticism for now...). He takes to constructing little boats in bottles.

Cross is pressed back into service when the daughter of a senator is kidnapped by a criminal, Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott), who ha
s been posing as a teacher for... well, actually, we're not sure how long he's been posing as a teacher, the film never makes that clear - it could be that he's worn that obviously fake beard and moustache for the last few years, and yet no-one's noticed it. Anyway, Megan (Mika Boorem), the senator's daughter, is kidnapped while she is supposedly under the watchful gaze of Secret Service agent Jezzie Flannigan (Monica Potter), who blames herself.

We learn that Soneji is a lunatic who essentially just wants to make a name for himself in the history books - much like Mark David Chapman or Bruno Richard Hauptmann... you get the idea. However, surely merely kidnapping a senator's daughter isn't enough to get in the history books in this day and age - no, of course not, Soneji has his eye on a much larger prize...

THE MOVIE

It's difficult to know where to start in criticising the movie. Probably the most obvious target is the plot itself. I don't know about you, but with thrillers, I like to be able to guess the film's conclusion. I like it when all of the information is presented to the audience, and we can anticipate the conclusion from the clues we've been given. In 'Along Came A Spider' this is impossible - information is deliberately kept from the audience, and although the ultimate conclusion is guessable, it's only because the story is so astonishingly predictable and derivative. So essentially, the movie fails on two counts - it presents the audience with an unsolvable puzzle, but makes the solution easy to guess.

Also, like many generic modern thrillers, the plot involves the internet at one point. As ever, the writers (whether it be Patterson or the film's scriptwriters) seem to have only the faintest of understandings about how the internet actually works. Someone has clearly mentioned to Patterson that it's possible to encode messages into graphic images, and t
hen perpetuate them over the internet, but clearly the conversation was just a brief one, because he clearly has little understanding of how such encryption would actually be carried out. To an extent, the book might have been able to bluff its way through this, as it never had to actually present the images, but in the movie the images have to be shown onscreen, leading to a bizarrely implausible sequence.

Similarly, it seems odd that the killer creates the peculiar Lindbergh website that Cross surfs at one point in the movie for clues, a website protected by a single easily-guessable password no less. Sigh. Oh, and what sort of criminal mastermind leaves his kidnappee's coat at the scene of a crime? Why not just tell the police where you are?

Possibly the most hackneyed section of the film is when Soneji forces Cross to dash about around Washington playing phone tag, a la 'Die Hard With A Vengeance' (or 'Dirty Harry', if your tastes are a little more refined). There's no reason for this, it advances the plot little, if at all, and just serves to make the viewer realise what a generic and uninspired bore this film really is. In fact, if it weren't for the presence of Morgan Freeman, you'd think you were watching a tedious episode of a TV cop show - perhaps one in the middle of a season, when even loyal viewers have started to lose interest. I mean, how much more generic can you get than teaming up two police officers (Cross and Flannigan) who are both feeling guilt about failing in their duties?

Hey, but enough about the plot. You get the idea - this is mindless, generic, uninspired, illogical and clumsy. I don't think there's any silver lining to the storyline. So, how's the acting?

In a word, abysmal. With only the one main star, Morgan Freeman, involved, you'd think he'd shine. Pah, dream on! Freeman only seems to perk up towards the end of the film, presumably after his pay
cheque had cleared. For most of the film, he seems to be half-asleep, barely reacting to anything going on around him. Now, I've seen him in 'Se7en', so I know he's capable of playing a thoughtful, introspective, laid-back detective, without seeming indifferent to the events going on around him. However, his performance here was exceptionally lacklustre and indifferent for the most part, producing an unconvincing and hollow effect.

His co-star, if she can be called such, since despite appearing on the posters and video cover isn't actually named on them, Monica Potter, is equally drab and uninvolving as ahem... Jezzie... Flannigan. She's a poor man's Julia Roberts, if that helps to give you an idea of what to expect.

Michael Wincott has the look of a typecast bad guy, and snarls his way through the role, exactly as you'd expect. He's not too bad, to be fair, but let's face it, if your character description doesn't extend beyond "generic villain", then it's none too hard to produce a decent performance.

No, surprisingly, the one ray of hope for the film's acting is the young Mika Boorem, who manages to convey all the emotions as kidnap victim Megan, all the way from surprise to terror, with aplomb. Again, it's not a phenomenally demanding role, but she does what's necessary, and that's really enough to stand out in a film like this.

The film's script is incredibly insipid, and overladen with plot exposition. Now, generally, excessive plot exposition would annoy me, but here it proved invaluable as it tried to patch together how Detective Cross leapt to the all-too-implausible conclusions that he did, and tried to disguise quite how unrealistic the film's coincidences really were. So, yes, the continual plot exposition was essential, but only because the structure of the film was so inept. "I think he's trying to tell us something." "
;He's playing some kind of game." Yawn.

But what about the action? Surely if the acting, plot and script are all so bad, there must be some gun-totting, fast-paced action sequences to keep me on the edge of my seat? Um... well, don't hold your breath. The opening sequences are fast-paced and reasonably exciting, even if the actual effects are really that exciting by modern standards. Then there's a long wilderness period in the middle of the film where very little happens, and then at the end there's some chasing about. Overall, this isn't a white-knuckle zone.

CONCLUSIONS

If you have to see this film, my suggestion is to watch the first ten to fifteen minutes, then leave the room for about an hour, and come back for the last ten minutes. That way you get to avoid the ridiculous bolted-on subplots, the appallingly clumsy dialogue, and the hopelessly over-laboured investigation, jumping straight to the ultimate "surprising" revelation... which actually makes more sense if you haven't followed the film throughout.

This truly is one of the most ineptly-made, tedious, hollow, uninspired and uninspiring films that I have sat through in months. Between the film's ridiculous and illogical plot, the actors' unenthusiastic performances, the dull pacing, and the insipid script, it's difficult to find anything to recommend about the film at all.

Oh yes, I've thought of something, it's only 104 minutes long - relatively brief by current Hollywood trends. Mind you, it's still an hour and a half that you'll never get back. Read a book instead... just don't make it one of Patterson's.

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