Webs

...and it's not something I'm proud of.

During my early high school years, I used to rent movies every Friday at my local video store, mostly horror films. One of those days, I asked the clerk for some recommendation since I couldn't find anything interesting enough, so he suggested ''Webs''. He described it as ''Alien with spiders instead of xenomorphs'' and since the DVD art looked sort of creepy, I believed him.

Oh boy, I had absolutely no idea of what I was about to see...

It took me less than 10 minutes to realize the truth; I had been fooled. I'd like to write a good review but I'll just sum this movie up with a single word; CRINGE.

It seemed like they didn't even tried hard, they just took ideas from lots of sci-fi/monster movies and executed them in the worst way possible; just compare the ending to the one of ''Deep Rising''. The acting was the kind of acting you expect to see in these kind of movies, forgettable and bland. The same goes for the dialogue.

And yes, it was the last movie I ever rented. It's not something I'm proud to say, but I don't regret it either, not in the least. It made me laugh a lot, so it gets a few points because of it.

'Webs' was another TV movie in a string of them made by the Sci-Fi network. It stars the hunky Richard Grieco as Dean, one of a quartet of Chicago electricians who were sent to an abandoned building to check out an unusual power source. What they find is a portal to another dimension. And in this dimension, the Earth of the future is decrepit and over run by the spider-people minions of a queen spider working towards total dominance.

This one is routine and uninspired, with unremarkable characters for the most part. They're not really fleshed out to where people can actually care about them, but editor / director David Wu keeps the pedal to the metal, delivering passable action at a consistent pace. This is also taken more seriously than a lot of cheese epics of this kind; there are not as many utterly laughable elements. The special effects aren't great but they're not all that terrible, either. It's still better CGI than this viewer has seen in other things.

The performances are very straight faced from all concerned. Grieco is decent enough and he even gets to shed a single tear in remembrance of his comrades. Kate Greenhouse is okay as a tough survivor of this other Earth. Canadian character actor Colin Fox is able to bring some gravitas to his role, and to the proceedings. The rest of the cast is nondescript, but not incompetent. David Nerman, as Crane, has an actual character arc where he comes off as argumentative and suspicious of Grieco for a while, but turns into a hero of sorts.

'Webs' is not great storytelling or TV movie making, but it's certainly not trying to be. Movies like them do have their place in the great scheme of things, and this viewer, for one, would sometimes rather watch junk like this than overproduced Hollywood feature film product.

Five out of 10.

One person commented Webs, raises the issue of, "If you could do it, should you?" And that might be just a little beyond its creator's true intentions but it does speak to a lot of the negative comments. Is Webs a bad movie? Is it low budget? Are the Actors second rate? You bet and I hope they never stop making movies like this.

Webs was made for TV, something important to keep in mind. I'd rather watch Webs over and over again than sit through any Sitcom crap, any unreal reality show or the next big Cop/Doctor/Lawyer Crapfest. Webs wasn't made to take your attention away from big blockbuster movies. Lets compare apples with apples.

Is Webs like Sliders? Well, yes in TV land, like Sliders, Webs is a sort of a Sci Fi film and it does involve dimensional travel but I'm smart enough to know I'm not watching a lost episode of sliders. I thought Webs dealt with the idea of despair and made the alternate Chicago seem like a place of lost hope. Sliders took us to some strange places but it always felt like we were just passing through waiting for the top of the hour to go some place else. In looking for faults, Webs has too many cookie cutter characters where you can remember their traits far easier than their names. There's the guy in peril controlled by greed and the doubting suspicious enforcer. There isn't much excuse for flat characters with fewer dimensions than the setting but, like the plot holes pointed out by others, it just comes down to bad writing. Just remember life is full of plot holes. My eight-year-old boy asks questions about our world that would take more time than you, me and Richard Grieco have left in our lives.

It all comes down to this. If DVD be damned and all we have is PVRs in our dimension, Webs would earn a spot on my hard drive right beside CSI: Baghdad. God help us.

A group of characters are transported to a parallel dimension in which spiders rule the earth. They try to build a portal to get back to their world. Sound familiar yet? Honestly, this has the look and feel of Sliders and about the same budget. The only difference is the characters in Sliders were more interesting. I am not saying that this is horrible but it isn't good either. If you like Sliders then watch this clone on SciFi channel when nothing else is on.

Like the unpleasant odor of an overflowing bedpan, it's... "WEBS".

It was amazing to see what the aging Richard Grieco has been doing since his last foray into 'acting', except when I checked to see what movies he's been in recently there were quite a few. Of course it seems that 99.999% of them have the title with the caption (TV). Ironically I knew a girl who just thought he was the hottest thing since Ponch on C.H.I.P.S., if that tells you anything. All I can say is that time has not been kind to his road weary face and his acting abilities are still as sub-par as ever.

Onwards and upwards... The CGI for the queen spider was decent, although not spectacular. The other people involved looked as if they were going through the motions, dutifully hoping the shooting schedule would end so they could go cash their checks before the rent on their trailer house(s) was due. It did have the look of an old 'Sliders' episode, except with half the budget and half the combined acting pool. All I can say is if you like crap, buy a bag of manure because at least it will fertilize your lawn.