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feel bad for screenwriters. They spend all their time
staring at a blank paper (or in most cases nowadays, a blank Final Draft
template on the computer) and trying to figure out the best way to construct a
movie, make up characters to carry out the movie, and later, what those
characters will say. And after they think they've gotten it all figured out, the
screenplay goes to an actor who just butchers the dialogue for no other reason
except they are unable to say the lines as written. Such is the case with the
first 10 minutes of "Spider's Web", which features some of the most
laugh-out loud lines coming out of the most incapable actors currently working
in B-movies.
And no, the rest doesn't get any better.
Of course I'm being somewhat generous to the writers here,
since "Spider's Web" is as atrociously bad as you can get with a
beautiful woman like Kari Wuhrer walking around half-naked half of the time.
Wuhrer stars as Lauren Bishop, a determined businesswoman who has her eye on
climbing the corporate ladder at all costs. But when Lauren's attempts are
rebuffed again and again by the infamous glass ceiling, she turns criminal, and
launches a clever scheme with new boyfriend Clay (Stephen Baldwin) to steal $40
million from the company.
Stephen Baldwin ("Dead
Awake") plays a trustfund kid with a very, very strange walk who falls
for Lauren and ends up helping her steal from his rich daddy. Baldwin and Wuhrer
shares executive producer credit, so there's no one to blame but them for the
generous amount of flesh the two actors peddle throughout the movie. Showing
that he's no chauvinist, Baldwin even exposes his pale white buttocks to the
camera for a lengthy period. I guess he didn't want his lovely co-star to
shoulder all the bare ass exposure duty. How nice of him.
"Spider's Web" is a "Wild Things" for
the B-movie crowd. The scheme, such as it is, could only work in movies without
a well thought out screenplay. For instance, how is it possible to record the
computer screen of a man in an office building across a lengthy distance
with an off-the-shelf camcorder? And record it clear enough to be able to read
the passwords that the man is typing? Or for that matter since when did
passwords on computer screens show up as letters and not encrypted
asterisks? Even my crummy computer, which has nothing to hide but the images and
html files for this website, encrypts my password. And this man, who makes $40
million dollar transfers over lunch, doesn't have this "extra"
security? Please.
Watch "Spider's Web" for the sex and skin, but
don't expect much else. It doesn't help that Kari Wuhrer is in serious mode,
which means her line readings are atrocious because, frankly, she has neither
the background nor the ability to deliver lines in a believable manner. She
should have stayed with the camp that made her so likeable in "Eight
Legged Freaks", or even the vamp role in "Poison",
another Direct-to-Video "thriller". Here, she's simply embarrassing
herself. Shockingly, Stephen Baldwin actually looks awake for this movie.
Unfortunately he's awake for a really bad movie with cheap production values.
How bad is the execution of "Spider's Web"? Well,
at one point, during what is supposed to be an emotionally intense bathroom
scene, someone in the crew must have tripped over the movie lights because the
screen goes dark for a second; and then someone must have grabbed the light
stand and righted it, and the screen was once again lit. But here's the shocker,
and the one thing that most describes "Spider's Web" -- the
filmmakers didn't even bother to re-shoot the scene!
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