Novelist James Patterson has made a great deal of money by turning nursery-rhyme phrases into formulaic thrillers, so it’s not surprising that somebody would want to make movie versions of them. Nor is it surprising that these movies are so mediocre and unsatisfying; they’re just so damn typical.
In Along Came a Spider, the de facto sequel to the 1997 adaptation of Patterson’s Kiss the Girls, typically smart detective-hero Dr. Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman, reprising his 1997 role) attempts to outwit a typically brilliant-but-disturbed kidnapper (Michael Wincott) who has absconded with a senator’s young daughter (The Patriot’s Mika Boorem). In so doing, he teams up with the typically beautiful Secret Service agent (Monica Potter) who failed to prevent the abduction. Together, they have to figure out the bad guy’s typically cryptic clues (including one howler that involves Charles Lindbergh and a webcam), try to placate the missing girl’s parents (Michael Moriarty and Penelope Ann Miller), and negotiate the sort of plot twists that happen mainly for the sake of plot twists. (I won’t stoop to giving them away here, but it doesn’t matter; the film telegraphs them so clumsily and so far ahead, you’ll know them three minutes before the opening credits.)
But the most typical things about the film are Freeman and Wincott. Working within the confines of their respective pigeonholes, they typically give better than their roles deserve. Too bad we’ve seen it all too many times before, and in much better movies. Like a nursery rhyme repeated ad nauseum by a little kid, Along Came a Spider is so familiar it’s annoying.
(2/4)