I made a promise to myself not to watch these dumb “mash-up” movies anymore but with this one… I made an exception.
Colton West is a Hollywood actor who doesn’t pull in the patrons as much as he used to. His agent literally bailed him out of jail with the promise that he would pay back the money with the film he just walked out of. After a recent blow-up with the director of his recent film, he finds himself without any prospects for new parts. As Colton heads home late to take his son to a baseball game, he calls his wife and apologizes for his recent problems. However, mid-way through his drive an unseen volcano in California erupts. If this wasn’t bad enough, the volcano is spewing giant lava-based spiders into the air.
Colton knows that his not having a part in a movie is the least of his problems at the moment. He speeds home to his family in the hopes of scooping them up and leaving town as fast as possible. Olivia doesn’t believe his story and wants nothing to do with his crap. She is pissed because their son left the house and she doesn’t know where he is. Colton decides he is going to find Wyatt, their son, on his own. Instructing Olivia to stay home, and stay inside he rushes out the door with a shotgun and a crazed look in his eye. It isn’t until Olivia witnesses her friend and neighbor being devowered by the spiders that she believes what is actually happening, and why Colton is so scared.
Like I said at the top, I wasn’t going to watch any more of this cash-grab, mash one monster type together with another and call it a movie, movies anymore but honestly, I couldn’t resist. I saw the trailer the other night while making a list of flicks to watch this year and this one grabbed my attention for several reasons. One, Steve Guttenberg was the lead actor and I can’t remember the last time I saw that. Two, there were more than a few OTHER Police Academy actors in the film along with that one kid from Sandlot. Three it had Nia Peebles in it. Only one of those three things made this movie worth it, and it has nothing to do with characters like Hooks, Callahan, and Jonesy.
This entire movie was just weird. So many times they made references to “movie talk” and semi-fourth-wall-breaking statements I couldn’t tell if they were talking about the movie being based on actors, or if the actors were making comments about actors. At one point Guttenberg, as Colton, runs into Ian Zering, as Fin Shepard from the Sharknado movies, and they have an exchange. The special effects here seemed semi-decent enough. It had a LOT of green-screening that needed to be tweaked a bit more to make them less noticeable. It’s all ham-fisted script full of one-liners that can be forgiven based on the fact that it’s about a washed-up action star.
I don’t know that I can recommend Lavalantula except to the most morbidly curious of viewers. It’s legit a movie that was created for the SyFy Channel so that should tell you enough about its production value. There apparently is a sequel that I feel oddly drawn to watch now but that’ll have to wait for another year. For now, though, if you wanna check this movie out prepare to be distracted by just how good Nia Peebles still looks at the age of 62, and honestly not much else.
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