Locusts: At least it had Lucy Lawless...

Whole lotta bugs, not a lotta plot.

Sigh. Why are so many movies I'm watching lately so bad, and not in a good way? I thought for sure that Lucy Lawless could carry any movie, and she does admirably well, but she is the only good thing about this made-for-CBS television movie. Made-for-tv isn't a sure fire sign something is going to be watered down, bland, and generally sleep-inducing, or even poorly written with every cliche you can think of thrown in. However, Locusts: Day Of Destruction does nothing to fight that stereotype I have formed in my mind.

It starts off promising. Two young people enter a lab where experimental locusts are secured. She's the lab assistant, and brought her boyfriend along so he can see the cool place she works before they go on their date. One of her tasks is to put a ficus plant in with the locusts, and naturally she decides not to don the protective gear. The locusts swarm her, start biting, she freaks out, but still manages to shout the code to the door to her boyfriend. She emerges no worse for wear (and surprisingly doesn't release any locusts like should have happened), and her boyfriend teases her about the giant grasshoppers. A little funny, a tad too cutesy for my taste, and one of the few entertaining moments of the whole affair.

It goes downhill as soon as Maggie Reardon (Lawless) is shown interacting with her husband, Dan, played by Dylan Neal. Now, I'm sure Dylan Neal is a talented actor, but something about a made-for-television movie must force you to listen to directors telling you to embrace your feminine side too tightly. The characters are having troubles in their marriage (boo hoo), and part of it stems from Maggie taking a very successful, very demanding, job with the Department of Agriculture. Her hubby whines about how he turned down a great job so they could be together and so they could settle down and start a family. Then in a slightly later scene when Maggie confesses she has to go out of town for her job instead of staying to talk with him, he snivels some more about how neglected he feels, and how he needs to put some space between him and her so he can sort things out. With so much estrogen pouring out of him, I started my period early.

Setting aside my hearty dislike for Dan's character, there are plenty of other things that just bored me and nothing more. Maggie naturally has to confront her former teacher, who is experimenting on locusts, and fires him. During the dismantling of the lab, some of the bugs are smuggled out, others escape, and the plague ensues. Government cover ups begin, finger pointing abounds, someone in the military suggests just poisoning the remote areas of Middle America despite the loss of human lives it would result in, and others mention the ten plagues of Egypt. Somewhere during all of this trite melodrama Maggie discovers she's pregnant, and we get another scene actually entertaining. Lucy Lawless displays her comedic timing as she's on the phone to her father telling him about it, and makes incoherent babble mixed with crying a poignant commentary on a successful woman realizing she's knocked up.

As a testimony to the lack of imagination found in mainstream television, a sequel called Vampire Bats was made, and released Halloween of 2005. I'm sure Dan is just as whiny and 'god-I-just-want-to-smack-you'-able as he is in the first movie, and I'm also sure the premise is just as weak and tired. I'm also sure that as soon as I get my hands on a copy, I will sit and watch it, because I am that masochistic when it comes to bad movies.

If you're a fan of Lucy Lawless, Locusts is worth a viewing, if only out of respect for the hard work she put in on it. Otherwise, don't bother, not even for the completely ludicrous ending where the locusts are destroyed because every American pitches in and turns off all of their lights. Trust me. It's nowhere near as cool or funny as that sounds.

You have been warned.