If the best thing you can say about a movie is that it had a really cool car crash, then maybe it's best not to say anything at all.
In what was already a pretty blah year, here's another one to throw on the mediocre pile. Along Came A Spider - cousin to 3,000 Miles to Graceland and Sweet November in the department of "Titles That Make No Sense" - is a thriller in which the solution would be pretty clever if you were still interested by the time the movie ends. I don't mean to be callous, but this is one of those movies where you actually invite comments from fellow audience members, and maybe a cell phone call or two. Anything to break the tedium.
The plot, such as it is: The daughter of a fairly unknown senator is kidnapped by her teacher. The teacher is a very sick, methodical man who has been following this girl for years. Maybe. There are a few twists along the way that make you question what the teacher actually wants (and how he ever got the teaching job in the first place) and, more importantly, why he's doing what he's doing. An explanation is provided later, but it's not a very good one.
Speaking of not very good explanations, enter Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman), disgraced detective who is suddenly brought back on the case when the kidnapper randomly calls him and gives him a piece of evidence. If this sounds like Hannibal, don't worry; there are many other things in Spider that are also ripped off - poorly.
Also enter Jezzie Flanagan, the Secret Service agent, played by Monica Potter with as much pouting as possible. She is assigned to protect the little girl, and, in yet another unexplained circumstance, teams up with Cross to find the girl. Since she is thrown into the plot for no reason, you must assume that she is either: (1) The Love Interest (but Freeman's getting a bit old for that), (2) The Daughter He Never Had (3) Hiding Something, (4)Damsel in Distress or (5) All of the Above.
And so it goes that there are chases, twists and turns, many cell phones that give specific instructions (again, like Hannibal), superior officers who berate our heroes, the concerned parents, and, of course, the major "twist" that reveals that there is more than one kidnapper... and on and on.
Even if you didn't like the plot and gross-out factor of Hannibal, at least you could appreciate how well it was made. The cinematography was lush and inventive, and Hopkins' performance was amazing. In Along Came a Spider, the camera work is flat and uninspiring... much like the script and Freeman's performance. He holds your attention, but since no one gives him anything interesting to do or say, it's a lost cause.
Oh, and the car crash; it happens early in the movie, in a sequence that is pretty tasteless and has little to do with the rest of the movie. But the car crash was really, really, cool and made me wish the director had made a movie about car chases instead of kidnapping and profilers.
At least I had some inspired movie-goers around me, who yelled out helpful things like, "Blow her brains out!" and "Oh, damn! It's the other guy!" and "That wasn't in the book." My personal favorite, however, was during The Big Showdown, where the real killer says to Freeman, "You know how you said you are what you do? Well, I'm living proof!" The person next to me replied, "I yam what I yam."
