EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (2001) * It's very important, I think, to determine whether you're making a comedy or a tragedy prior to going into production. This would seem a particularly important, and easy, decision when the subject matter is comic book superheroes. Black comedy is one thing, bipolar plot parallellism another. Not that too much is funny about it, some of the sets are funny and the absurd situations offer unaccepted challenges for high-calibre absurdists. Even Dan Aykroyd is very dry, though at times silhouetting eerily like Carroll O'Connor. Amelia Heinle spends so much time walking around in the hallway of her apartment that in even such a short film she manages to be attacked by both The Midtown Killer and The Arachnid Avenger. Theresa Russell is her only competition in the mandatory "best actress" competition, as Trixie, Akyroyd's drunken floozie of a wife. Looking back on it, it probably wasn't such a great idea to try and figure out where Kafka and Spiderman merge (they don't). The metamorphsizing spider stuff should keep stoned comic geeks and maskmakers amused, but it's a limited demographic.
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