Big Ass Spider! Big Time Fun
You get what you pay for as it pertains to Big Ass Spider!, and to my mind this is a very good thing indeed. If you’re headed to the box office chances are you have preconceived ideas of what it is you want, the title of the film not exactly shrouding things in any sort of mystery. It is, after all, claiming to be a movie about a big ass spider, meaning that if it doesn’t have one you are likely to come away angrily disappointed.
PHOTO: Epic Pictures
Rest assured, the title character makes her appearance relatively early in director Mike Mendez’s (The Gravedancers) and screenwriter Gregory Gieras’ (Beyond) gloriously cheesy Z-grade giant monster horror-comedy, letting one know in no uncertain terms the filmmakers grasp just how insanely silly the story they’re about to tell is going to be. The movie is virtually a stream of consciousness joke-a-second compendium of creature feature clichés inherent to the genre, everyone involved playing up the lunacy with a knowing wink and a generous smile.
But here’s the thing, unlike the majority similar efforts such (most notably anything made by the folks over at Asylum or the gang at the Syfy Channel) Mendez and Gieras have copious amounts of wit on their side, many of their gags more engaging then they have any right to be thus tickling the funny bone relatively nicely. Better, while the cast seems to be having somewhat of a blast they still manage to play things more or less straight, keeping things on a more even, and thus easygoing and realistic, keel than would have been possible otherwise.
The plot is relatively standard stuff. Los Angeles exterminator Alex Mathis (Greg Grunberg) suddenly finds himself in the middle of a military emergency when a mysterious spider is suddenly unleashed inside a hospital morgue. Teaming up with security guard Jose Ramos (Lombardo Boyar) and hoping to impress sexy Army lass Lieutenant Karly Brant (Clare Kramer) he begins to scour the city looking for the arachnid’s secret lair. Things spiral out of control when the creature grows, you guessed it, really, REALLY big, eating people willy-nilly proceeding to make a new nest atop one of L.A.’s tallest buildings.
PHOTO: Epic Pictures
It’s all as dumb as it sounds, but Mendez and Gieras keep things loose and bouncy never taking things too seriously but just as importantly refraining from holding their audience in anything close to contempt. They walk a fairly fine line and do it pretty darn well, everything coupled with the self-effacing charms of Grunberg and Boyar (who make a terrific Mutt and Jeff combo) allowing the humor to hit home more often than it misses.
I’m not going to claim Big Ass Spider! is a good movie, and it’s no surprise it fails to rise to the arachnid horror-comedy heights of something like say Arachnophobia (not that it was perhaps meant to). But unlike recent throwback giant monster absurdities like Sharknado or Sharktopus, or even fellow crossbreeding man-eating spider theatrical offering Spiders 3D, there is a fun time to be found in the watching of this, and if there were midnight showings in my neighborhood I’d be first in line cheerleading for folks to buy a ticket.
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
