TV wasteland's latest scourge: 'Locusts'
The CBS movie is big on bugs - live ones, computer-generated ones, fake rubber ones - but thin on everything else.
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published April 24, 2005
The title of CBS's Sunday movie Locusts says all you need to know.
Locusts is about bugs.
Oh, sure, it's also dopey, made-for-TV, why-am-I-watching-this fare.
But if you like bugs, it's all good. Because if there's one thing Locusts doesn't skimp on, it's bugs. This isn't one of those frustratingly understated monster movies where the audience never gets a good look at the baddies. Locusts is eat up with bugs. It's bugtacular. It's bugapalooza.
Fans of television reality grossout show Fear Factor should feel right at home watching pretty girls covered in insects.
Starring Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) as U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary and voracious-insect expert Dr. Maddy Rierdon, the plot is formulaic disaster movie stuff: Meddling, bumbling government scientists botch an experiment, put the public in danger, and the military threatens to kill 10 percent of the population to clean up the mess until rogue government hero-scientist solves problem and finally (SPOILER ALERT!) the world is saved.
On that level, Locusts doesn't disappoint. USDA scientist Dr. Peter Axelrod John Heard, the dad in Home Alone has created a hybrid combination of the desert locust and the Australian plague locust (visit the Australian Plague Locust Commission online at www.daff.gov.au/aplc The doctor's creation is resistant to all known pesticides, and it lives longer, flies farther and faster and reproduces at 10 times the rate of regular locusts.
Hey, Doc, what on earth were you thinking?
Lawless finds out about Heard's project and wisely orders the entire stock of lust-crazed, voracious uberbugs destroyed.
But wouldn't you know it, some of the beasties escape!
A month later, and a handful of bugs have fornicated themselves into a pair of gazillion locust colonies that begin eating their way across America.
Lawless realizes this is trouble and warns, "If these swarms merge and meet in America's heartland, they'll encounter an abundance of their favorite food: grain. At that point, they will become unstoppable."
From there, it's a race against time. Giant clouds of locusts ruin a citrus festival, creep out some office workers, create traffic problems and crash a jet.
As the pilot of a doomed jet notes, "Those are some huge, honkin' bugs!"
Locusts sticks with its strong suit through most of the movie, showing us real bugs, computer-generated bugs and fake rubber bugs at every opportunity.
Where it careens off kilter is when the actors attempt any kind of dialogue, try to make sense of the plot, or bid for any semblance of credibility.
And of course there's a message at the end: It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Or, as Lawless poetically spells it out, "You screw with nature and nature will screw with you."
Oh, and this public service message from the California Highway Patrol, as relayed by a remarkably calm television news reporter unfazed by an apocalyptic plague:
"If drivers encounter a locust swarm while traveling, the CHP urges them to use caution, pull over, and stay in their vehicles."
If there's anything useful viewers can glean from Locusts, there's that.
REVIEWLocusts airs at 9 tonight on WTSP-Ch. 10.