10/29/14 (Part Two): Now THAT’S a Spider, Man!

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31 Days of Halloween, Abbott and Costello, Alexis Kendra, Big Ass Spider!, cinema, Clare Kramer, exterminator, film reviews, films, friends, giant insects, giant spiders, great openings, Greg Grunberg, Gregory Gieras, horror, horror-comedies, King Kong, Lin Shaye, Lloyd Kaufman, Lombardo Boyar, Mike Mendez, military coverup, Movies, pest exterminator, Ray Wise, sci-fi, Where Is My Mind?

As a tinkling, piano-led cover of the Pixies iconic “Where Is My Mind?” plays on the soundtrack, we watch as Alex (Greg Grunberg), clad in exterminator’s overalls, strides in slow motion through absolute chaos: soldiers fire at something behind him, people run away screaming and buildings collapse into rubble everywhere. And then, we see it: a massive spider, as big as a house, sits atop a skyscraper like an arachnid King Kong. It strikes a helicopter out of the air with one giant foreleg, sending it flaming to the ground as the screen cuts to black. Text comes up on the screen: 12 hours earlier.

This is the first three minutes of Mike Mendez’s Big Ass Spider! (2013) and let me assure you: it is three absolutely glorious, nearly perfect minutes. If the rest of the film fails to completely live up to that decidedly high bar, well, that’s one of the prices paid for ambition. From the title on down, there’s nothing about BAS! that necessarily screams “must-see”: if anything, the film seems like it would be nothing more than a SyFy-esque romp with serviceable effects, some stupid laughs and lots of cheese. Quite the contrary, however, Mendez’s film has plenty of heart and is non-stop fun: it’s the furthest thing from perfect but it’s also utterly charming and, in the end, that’s always going to win me over.

Our hero, Alex, is a pest exterminator who’s ended up in the hospital after coming across the business-end of a brown recluse spider during a house call. He’s a perpetually nice guy but he’s also sort of a clumsy doofus: his attempts to flirt with a nurse (Alexis Kendra) are awkward, to say the least, and he always seems one misstep away from complete chaos. Alex gets called into action when the hospital administrator approaches him about an issue: “something” appears to be loose in the hospital and they want Alex to kill it, an offer he gladly takes up in order to wipe his exorbitant bill clean. When he learns that the creature appears to be a large spider, Alex feels he’s more than up to the task: “I become a spider to catch a spider.”

As it turns out, however, Alex doesn’t really know what he’s up against. You see, this is no abnormally large spider, as we come to see: this thing is obviously some sort of mutated monster, an acid-spraying, lightning-fast nightmare that uses the hospital’s ventilation system to move from victim to victim. Suspicions are confirmed when the military quickly shows up, led by no-nonsense Major Braxton C. Tanner (Ray Wise). Turns out that the spider in question was actually part of a government experiment that went awry (natch) and they’re now faced with a creature that will continue to grow, unchecked, until they can destroy it.

With the help of his faithful partner (and resident security guard) Jose (Lombardo Boyar), along with Lt. Karly Brant (Clare Kramer), a soldier who’s a terrible shot but seems to have a crush on the exterminator, Alex pursues the rapidly growing spider from the hospital, into the sewers and, finally, onto the very streets of the terrified metropolis. To destroy this dreadful abomination, Alex is gonna needs lots of help, some hardcore firepower…and more than a little luck.

Despite coming out of the gate strong (incredibly strong, to be fair), BAS! wasn’t the grand slam that I was hoping it would be, although it still ended up being a ton of fun. There’s so much about the film that really works that it’s easier to gloss over the elements that don’t, chief among them being the often tedious relationship between Alex and Jose. For the most part, Jose exists as a gentle Mexican stereotype, never mean-spirited, per se, but ridiculously clichéd, none the less. His constant banter gets really grating, after a while, as does the ham-fisted Abbott and Costello routine that Grunberg and Boyar effectively beat into the ground. Although I didn’t find their interaction to be as noisome by the film’s final third (they actually become a rather cute duo), there’s an awful lot of corn to wade through to get there. The film could also get a little silly, at times, and I noticed that the CGI tended to get dodgier the bigger the spider got: by the time it’s car-sized, we’re squarely in SyFy territory, effects-wise.

But these are all minor quibbles, ultimately, the kinds of issues that plague pretty much any B-movie. For the most part, BAS! hits all of its beats and manages to maintain a breezy, good-natured sense of humor that keeps things from ever getting overly serious…not that a film about a giant spider could ever be overly serious, mind you, but you get the point. Grunberg, most notable as one of the “heroes” on the bygone “Heroes” show, is pretty great as the lead here and ably carries the film: he’s a perfect combination of innocence and sass, never so smarmy as to be insufferable, yet steely enough to be believable. It’s also nice to see Wise play the straight guy, for a change: his take-charge Major is still recognizably Wise but it’s a much flintier version than we normally get. I also really like the ending, which gives the perfect set-up for a sequel (“What’s the biggest cockroach you’ve ever seen?”) without seeming too obvious.

If anything, Big Ass Spider! is a gleeful throwback to the era of good-natured, drive-in flicks, the kind of film that goes perfectly with a lukewarm sixpack of cheap beer, a carload of friends and a warm, summer night. It won’t reinvent the wheel, technically speaking, but it doesn’t really need to (or mean to), either. If the thought of a Volkswagon-sized spider rampaging through a city park and eating a pervy jogger played by Troma head Lloyd Kaufman puts a smile on your lips, this is absolutely the film for you. I might dislike real spiders with a fervor approaching religious zeal but I’m happy to hang out with this webcrawler any day of the week.

2/23/14: The Long, Long, Long and Winding Road

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Andy Serkis, based on a book, Bilbo Baggins, CGI, Christopher Lee, cinema, dragons, dwarves, elves, epic, fantasy, Film, film reviews, Gandalf the Grey, giant spiders, Ian McKellen, J.R.R. Tolkien, long films, Lord of the Rings, Martin Freeman, Middle Earth, Movies, orcs, Peter Jackson, Richard Armitage, Saruman, Smaug, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Thorin, trilogies, wizards

As a child, one of my favorite, most beloved films was the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit. If I watched that damn thing a thousand times, I must have watched it at least ten thousand times. I loved absolutely everything about it: the animation style, the awesome action scenes, the great soundtrack. To this day, I can’t help but smile every time I think of the film and will frequently find myself humming Glenn Yarbrough excellent theme song, “The Greatest Adventure” out of nowhere. The 1977 version of Tolkien’s classic story may not be perfect but it was perfect enough to be the only version I needed while growing up (aside from the original book, of course).

Since I have such an emotional, nostalgic connection to the original cartoon, I was actually anything but eager to sample Peter Jackson’s newest adaptation. The reasons for this end up having a little to do with wanting to preserve my cherished memories but more to do with my own preconceived notions as to what Jackson would actually do with the rather modest source material. Although I enjoyed Jackson’s panoramic, exhaustive treatment of The Lord of the Rings series, I was more than a little afraid that he would attempt to inflate The Hobbit to the same extremes. Whereas Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings practically screams for a huge, larger-than-life adaptation, The Hobbit is a much smaller affair. Perfect for a single session, I was worried that Jackson would drown his adaptation in minutiae, turning in the equivalent of a super-sized bit of fan service. After all: when the story can be told effectively in one sitting, what could be the possible benefit of expanding and separating it out into three separate pieces (aside from the inherent financial benefit of selling three separate films)? Unfortunately, after finishing the first installment of Jackson’s new trilogy, I find that my previous fears were all well-founded: while An Unexpected Journey has moments of brilliance, it’s also bloated, leaden and more overly-reliant on CGI than any of Jackson’s previous films. After finishing the film (or the first third, as it were), I was left with one over-riding impression: sometimes, less can be much, much more. And much better.

By this point in the history of the world, we should all be (more or less) familiar with the basic story of The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a comfortably mundane hobbit with a modest home, is recruited by Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) to assist a group of dwarves in reclaiming their ancestral home from the massive dragon that drove them from it in the first place. Bilbo, being a hobbit, is less than happy with the idea of anything resembling danger or adventure. As time (and the journey) go on, however, Bilbo will learn the true meaning of courage and will eventually grow into the hero, albeit modest, that Gandalf always knew him to be. Along the way, he’ll meet elves, trolls, a particularly nasty spider named Shelob and, eventually, the dragon named Smaug.

Tolkien’s The Hobbit may be many things but it is, primarily, the story of Bilbo learning to be courageous and self-sufficient. Perhaps the biggest sin of Jackson’s version of The Hobbit is how little it actually seems to be about its titular character. Truth be told, An Unexpected Journey seems to be the story of Gandalf and the dwarves, with some small support from Bilbo, as needed. This could, of course, be due to the inherent curse of the three-film structure: Part One has to set everything up, Part Two has to bridge and Part Three lets us paint the town red. For my money, the three-part structure was also an issue for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if a much more necessary one than in The Hobbit.

In essence, An Unexpected Journey ends up being one of the longest prologues in cinema history. Jackson spends so much time on each page of Tolkien’s text (along with various supplemental material) that the film seems to move in real-time, which would seem to be particularly thrilling during the fight sequences but proves to be almost coma-inducing during the extended scene at the beginning where the dwarves gather in Bilbo’s house. At over thirty minutes long, the scene is a seemingly never-ending stream of dwarves eating, drinking, singing and talking while Bilbo bustles around worried and Gandalf smokes sagely. They do manage to throw in the great ditty about washing Bilbo’s dishes but that’s hardly surprising since everything else gets added, as well.

The film manages to hit all of the important moments and beats from Tolkien’s book (if greatly expanded), yet also opts to throw in tons of material that either add a “Hollywood” aspect to the film (the introduction of Azoth as some sort of Bond-esque villain, complete with mechanical arm, is total horseshit) or needlessly tie The Hobbit in to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Christopher Lee returns as the villainous Saruman, although anyone who’s seen Jackson’s LOTR already knows what he has up his sleeve, which seems to dilute the intended impact). At times, there are so many references to LOTR and cameos from previous actors/characters that it smacks alarmingly of fan version. One could argue that both series exist in the same world and overlap key characters: one could also argue, however, that The Hobbit always existed as its own entity and was not dependent on LOTR but enhanced and informed by it. Rather than functioning as its own, stand-alone narrative (as it rightly should), An Unexpected Journey often feels like additional player content for an already purchased video game. For an additional $12 (times three, technically), Jackson’s given us the chance to spend a little more time with beloved characters, even if they’re mostly cameos.

Adding to the video game parallel, in my opinion, are the CGI-heavy visuals. Too often, I found the backgrounds to resemble video game cut scenes (think Final Fantasy 35) and I never found myself fully immersed in Middle Earth. While the Lord of the Rings trilogy utilized CGI (particularly the final film), there was still heavy use of practical effects and makeup. Here, the orcs all have a smooth, shiny, generic appearance that reminds me of what a PS3 adaptation of The Descent might look like. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to remember any of the baddies in this one, although I’m assuming that Shelob’s appearance in the second film will be pretty awesome (what can I say: I’m a sucker for giant spiders). The fight between the giant CGI eagles and the CGI wargs is pretty cool but most of the other battles devolve into a kind of frenzied, generic CGI smash-em-up with little individual definition and lots of repetitious action. It gets old fast and is definitely a let-down: I wasn’t enamored of the film, in general, but the battle scenes were my least favorite parts, oddly enough.

Lest it seem like I’m unnecessarily slamming the film, let me be clear: despite my hesitance to see this particular film (due to the reasons stated above), I’ve always been a huge Peter Jackson fan. In fact, up to and including The Fellowship of the Rings, Jackson was one of my favorite directors, ranked in my head in a similar position to Ben Wheatley nowadays. I absolutely love Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles and Heavenly Creatures: each one is as perfect a film, in their own ways, as was ever made. I haven’t really cared for much past LOTR, however, and I grew weary with that series by the end of the second film. In a way, I equate Jackson’s later day career to Tim Burton’s later day career: I’ll always love their early films but I have a real hard time fully appreciating their more recent offerings.

Despite my various and sundry complaints about An Unexpected Journey, however, there is still plenty to laud about the film. The acting is uniformly solid, with Martin Freeman particularly excellent as Bilbo. Andy Sirkis returns as Gollum and, as expected, his scene with Bilbo is a real highlight. The dwarves, although rather interchangeable, are a likable enough bunch, although Thorin (Richard Armitage) is such an obvious stand-in for Aragorn from LOTR that it comes across as a bit silly. The haunting, mournful song that they sing towards the end of the epic first night at Bilbo’s is chill-inducing. There’s also some genuine inventive nuttiness to be found in Greenwood, especially once Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy) is being pulled around on a sled by a team of rabbits. If anything, I wish that more of the film had been this inventive and…well…fun.

Ultimately, An Unexpected Journey is what it is: the first of three films in a very large expansion of a very modest story. Perhaps it’s unfair (and unwise) to judge the whole thing by the first entry. At the same point, however, I can’t help but feel that the original Hobbit would have had us all safe and warm back in our shires, by this point, while Jackson’s adaptation still has us trudging through the cold, desolate wilderness, many, many miles away from our eventual destination.