Nobody likes background info so I’ll be short and sweet. I have a friend in Australia whose father is a rich CEO of a housing company. To give you an idea of how rich his father is, he bought off a whole section of the city, built a series of neighborhoods spanning 4 or 5 blocks, and named it "Gracelands", because he really likes Elvis Presley. He also once paid a million dollars to some shady people to make a snuff video for him. Whoops, wrong movie.

Anyway, through him, my girlfriend Janice, myself, and a few of members of his family got tickets to a free screening of Along Came A Spider (If you’re a little confused, let me explain: movies come out later in most other countries than they do in America. Did you know next week they get Grease?). The theater we went to was ultra fuckin cool. Free popcorn and drinks, wine, finger foods, waiters and waitresses, and this was just in the lobby! We eventually dispense with the pleasantries, but not before I can take about 6 bags of popcorn and 20 drinks into the theater with me. Hey, this event might be high class but I’m sure as hell not. When we enter the theater, we find that in every seat there are gifts. They alternate between seats: a mug, and a hat. Once again, this place is high class, I am not. I take the present in my seat and the one in the seat next to mine, most likely depriving some 5 year old kid of a color changing mug. I’m apparently not the only one with the manners of a Hun, as I see 3 or so ladies doing the same thing in plain view. Sheesh, at least I had to dignity to do it quickly and secretly.

We sit down in our seats…..and sink. Ahhh, you know you’re in a good theater when you’d rather sleep in the chairs than in your bed at home. I would have taken one of those home two but I couldn’t seem to fit in under my shirt….

After we all sit down the spokesman for the company sponsoring this screening stands up and gets on a mike. Since Jan and I aren’t part of the company we can only sit and watch everyone else around us(who are part of the company in one form or another) stroke their collective cocks over how cool they all are for about 5 minutes. Finally lights go down, curtains go up, and we start the movie.

First negative sign: no previews. I think I speak for everyone when I say that half the time we buy a ticket to a movie, it’s to see the previews for all the other movies that are coming out that we’re going to go see just to see previews. Instead we just get to the title sequence.

I honestly don’t know why movies invest so much time and money into their title sequences. First of all, nobody gives a shit. Second of all, they all look the same, with one letter or a name or credit somehow molding and shaping it’s way into the rest of the word. Thirdly, nobody gives a shit! Look at Star Wars, they didn’t even HAVE opening credits. Their credits at the end? Simple pop up blue ones. Stop wasting your money and time, movie companies.

SPOILER ALERT!

Yeah um, the majority of you really shouldn’t give a shit, but in case you do, this is the part where I completely rip the stupid twists and surprises the movie tries to pull off throughout the film. Be warned.

The movie starts out with a sting operation in progress as a lady cop goes undercover to try and bust a serial rapist. We find that the female cop is Morgan Freeman’s partner, and that Morgan is in a helicopter following the two as they drive in a car down the highway. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was a serial rapist, I would be a little suspicious if a big black fucking helicopter was following my car. This guy however, doesn’t seem to notice.

The rapist soon implements Rule Number 1 of "Is this girl right for me?" by trying to make her go down on him during the car ride. Unfortunately when she resists, he finds her earpiece device that she uses to keep in contact with her partner, Alex Cross(Freeman). She quickly pulls a gun out and informs him of the situation. That situation being of course, that he’s under arrest. Then……..something happens, I forget what, and the car goes spinning out of control, smashing into the walls in a computer generated scene that would have made Tron look good by today’s standards. The car goes careening over a bridge and is caught by some support rungs just in time. Cross uses his super detective powers to land the Helicopter and race over to the bridge in a matter of 3 seconds, just in time to reach out to his partner, who is in the dangling car. Unfortunately Cross’ arm isn’t 30 feet long and she doesn’t even come close, falling to her death. We get the look of despair from Cross as she splashes into the water. Ahh, Christ. How many fucking movies is Morgan Freeman going to play the detective with the tortured soul who tracks down some sadistic killer? First Seven, then Kiss The Girls, now this?

Fast forward 8 months, and the daughter of DC Senator Rose is kidnapped by her teacher. The funny thing is, Secret Service was all over the building at the time of the kidnapping, yet he gets away without a hitch. The kidnapper who works under the name Gary Sonjei, calls up Cross, giving him mysterious clues as to the motive of this kidnapping. Cross immediately tapes the phone conversation and heads to the Rose mansion.

It is here where Cross meets….uhh..hold on I forgot her name she was so forgettable, let me look it up………

Ah, here we go, Jezzie Flanagin, the former Head of Operations at the school who has fallen out of favor with the rest of the service for allowing the kidnapping to take place. The two eventually pair up to try and find the little girl and bring Sonjei to justice.

The next hour or so is just killing time as they go through pointless investigating to find out why Sonjei took the little girl. What the movie-makers failed to realize is by this time we don’t even care why he kidnapped her. The first half of the movie is so reminiscent of Freeman’s former movies that the audience could have drawn their own conclusions anyway. Meanwhile the little girl Sonjei kidnapped apparently has an IQ of 180 because she finds 2 or 3 almost ingenius ways of trying to escape throughout the movie that would make McGuyver jealous. The following include: Opening up an intercom device, taking out a power source that’s apparently flammable, and using it to cause a diversion while she runs away; grabbing a fork and knocking out a lightbulb so the person trying to shoot her can’t see; and the ever so clever "Yelling for help while trapped inside a boat" technique.

The short and boring point is this: Sonjei is attempting to recreate The Crime of the Century, by kidnapping the Rose girl, and using her as bait to lure her schoolmate and crush, Dimitri, the son of the Russian President, so that Sonjei can kidnap him as well. This is completely ridiculous as Sonjei could have just kidnapped Dimitri first instead of the Senator’s daughter. They were in the same freakin class together, with Sonjei as their teacher!

Freeman, with the help of his new protégé, Jezzie, foil Sonjei’s attempt just in time, saving Dimitri. However, Sonjei escapes back to his secret boat, only to find that the Rose daughter is missing. Here’s where it gets incredibly retarded, as Cross and team suddenly get a call from who they think is Sonjei demanding $12 Million in diamonds. A scene stolen right out of Die Hard With A Vengeance ensues with Freeman going from payphone to payphone throughout the city, receiving instructions on where to drop off the diamonds. After the diamond drop is complete, Cross and Jezzie head back to Jezzie’s house to contemplate the newest twist in the kidnapping. Another completely stupid thing about this movie is how Yoda-like Cross is to Jezzie. At every point in the investigation, Jezzie says the most stupidly obvious thing in the world, and Cross then follows it up with cheezy dialogue like "Mr. Sonjei resembles a spider…..and I happen to like spiders." Or "You do what you are, Jezzie". They’re in the middle of one of these such conversation when Sonjei crashes the party. How he knew where they were or what they were doing there is not mentioned, and apparently the audience is supposed to believe that Sonjei has mental powers far beyond the grasps of our feeble minds. A conversation ensues, Cross deducts that Sonjei no longer has the girl, and promptly kills him. If that sounds a little harsh, remember, Cross is a DC cop. This is just standard procedure for him.

We cut to the Rose’s daughter’s new prison, some kind of warehouse. And who’s this bringing her lunch? Why, it’s….it’s…..wait a minute who the fuck is that guy? Oh! It’s that Secret Service guy that was in like ONE scene the entire movie! It appears that HE is the insidious mastermind behind all of this! What an "awesome" plot twist!

As Secret Service guy is watching TV at the hideout, Jezzie surprises him with a gun. It looks as if she’s going to save the girl and the day, but…..OH MY GOD JEZZIE WAS IN ON IT FROM THE BEGINNING! I DIDN’T EVEN SEE IT COMING A MILE AWAY!

She tells Secret Service guy to get the diamonds so she can see them. I call his death right here. She sees them, and informs him that Cross will eventually find them. Well, him at least, then shoots him in the head. Did I call that or what?

Cross, after killing Sonjei apparently absorbed his psychic ability, because after finding out Jezzie’s scheme, he miraculously finds her hideout and confronts her. She says he would never shoot his protégé. Cross shoots her. What did I tell you about DC cops?

For Along Came A Spider, there no line is too cliched, no plot twist too stupid to be added into this movie. It is a movie where not only did the audience have no chance of guessing who the ultimate bad guy was, but no desire to either. I found myself literally cringing and slapping my hand to my forehead throughout the movie. The ending was such an insult to the movie-goer’s collective intelligence that it boggles the mind. Two Secret Service agents, people who are psychologically examined every 6 months, and who have to have a perfect record of dedicated service to even be considered for the job both collaborate on a kidnapping? Get real.

And that’s just what Along Came A Spider fails to do: Get real. There’s nothing realistic about the premise, plot, characters and most of all the twists in the movie. It seemed as if the producers were thinking "Hey it may not make a lick of sense but at least no one will see it coming!". What they didn’t realize is that anyone with half a brain could have seen the end result before it happened.

That’s not even the worst part. Much to my surprise, it turns out that the original cut of Along Came A Spider was so badly received by audiences at test screenings, that they had to push back the release date another year to reshoot most of the movie, including the ending. Holy shit, if the movie is still this bad after a year of tinkering, I’d hate to see what the test audiences saw.

As for the ending, it seems I’m not the only one that didn’t like it: Other movie reviewers have expressed the same thoughts I have on the subject. The critics hated, Morgan Freeman himself hated it, everyone hated it. "Hated" seems to be a great way to sum up this movie. Hey, at least I got mug and hat out of the deal. Then again, that was probably given to us as an apology for being subjected to this piece of crap.