Short, funny, ridiculous and best enjoyed with a beer amongst friends. Those are the words that describe Mike Mendez’s crazy film Big Ass Spider. Yes, that is the real title.
The plot of the film is very simple. An alien hybrid spider escapes from a military test center and ends up in a hospital where it is birthed. From there, the spider begins to attack and eat people, growing through different phases, quadrupling in size each phase it passes until the spider is of King Kong proportions. When the military can’t manage to contain or kill this gigantic arachnid, it’s up to a professional exterminator named Alex Mathis (Greg Grunberg) and his Mexican “Robin,” aka a hospital security guard named Jose (Lombardo Boyar), to track and take out this menacing beast before it can reproduce.
A majority of the film follows Alex and Jose cas they begin to track the spider in its baby stage through the hospital all the way into a bustling section of downtown LA. The two of them are the heart and joy of the film, bringing the comedy and joyful action to fruition and a smile to my face consistently throughout the film. The first moment we meet Jose the security guard you know he’s going to be the golden boy of the film, speaking in hilarious spanglish and spitting out crazy strings of dialogue that only sounds better with an accent while Alex does everything he can to try to look like a boss in front of the ladies.
I can’t necessarily say the same thing for everyone else. The other actors may have been able to give good performances if their dialogue was better, it was downright laughable or cringe inducing at times. But in all honesty, I can handle most of the crappy dialogue and some of the poor performances because that’s what you expect in these B-rated indie sci-fi films, it’s part of their charm, what I can’t handle is a complete change in a character’s personality, especially when it comes to love interests. This particularly happens with Alex’s potential love interest Lt. Karly Brant (Clare Kramer). Spoiler At first she comes off as a semi-hard ass but by the end
of the film she’s calling him babe and getting all lovey dovey with him. I get that when a guy saves you a girl might fall hard and go “my hero” but I don’t buy that for a woman in the military, I at least expect a line like “if anyone finds out I’ll rip your nuts off” just to maintain the butch persona. End spoiler.
Overall, Big Ass Spider is a pretty funny throughout especially because of the chemistry and hilarious banter between Alex and Jose, but upon reflection it’s even funnier because while the film is literally about a big ass spider running around causing havoc, the movie is actually about Alex proving to the military he can kill this spider while trying to score a date and prove himself to a hot woman in uniform. Though it’s plagued by you standard B-grade film issues, the effects are pretty damn good and thankfully its short runtime allows you to appreciate the more entertaining moments rather than giving you time to think about all the problems you might have with it.
Rating: Stupid fun coupled with some ridiculous and tense moments result in an amusing midnight film that you should watch with others (5.7/10)
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