Eight Legged Freaks

There must be a list a mile long of movies about creatures that grow to ginormous size after a chemical malfunction - i.e. spillage. The environmentalists should be happy. If it hadn't been for irresponsible deep-sea dumping, Godzilla, might never have grown large enough to make that trip to New York... No one's listening. Who cares how they got big. They are and that's the fun.

Except it's not anymore. It's samey. A 10-year-old musquash could have thought up this plot. Remember Tremors? Mammoth man-eating worms on the rampage in the desert? Eight Legged Freaks substitutes spiders, forgetting one important factor. What made Tremors so enjoyable were the characters.

David Arquette is the star and yet his role has no purpose whatsoever. He plays the son of a mine owner, now deceased, who returns to his small hometown in Arizona after 10 years away to discover that a local entrepreneur is planning to build a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere, as well as buy up the disused mines, because he knows - or thinks he knows - there's gold down there.

His ex-girlfriend (Kari Wuhrer) is now the sheriff, a pint-sized foxy lady, with two bright teenage kids, one of whom (Scarlett Johansson) is hangin' with the rebel crew, except noone's a delinquent in this movie, they just ride their Harleys too fast in a restricted zone.

Arquette wants to tell Wuhrer that he's sorry he ran out on her. She has other things on her mind, such as giant spiders invading the town after drinking a chemical pollutant that fell off the back of a lorry. People are being dragged away and cocooned by these monstrous insects and, since the phone lines are down - hey! not again! not the phone lines! - they're on their own.

Unlike in Tremors, the characters are cardboard, with the exception of the teenagers, who aren't given a chance. Arquette wanders about in a daze. Wuhrer looks busy and concerned. The rest are spider lunch.

The effects are cheesy and not at all scary. The script follows conventional lines. There aren't enough jokes and, as for the love interest, perrrlease!

Someone should take Arquette to one side and tell him, "Your sisters have talent, but don't assume it's contagious." Arachnophobics need not worry. These spiders are fake.

Anyone for giant centipedes? More legs.