Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow

CinemaSerfJun 2024

3.0

"Inspector Sun" has a canny knack of solving crimes, but usually he leaves quite a trail of devastation in his wake. It's that that finally leaves his boss with no option but to send him on an holiday. Distracted by super-fan "Janey", he misses his intended flight and ends up travelling to San Francisco instead. It turns out that his new found friend has stowed away on this luxurious seaplane, but that's just the start of his troubles. "Arabella" is a black widow spider, on her umpteenth husband so nobody is surprised when he is found dead. She is held to blame and incarcerated in the brig. Thing is, "Sun" is not convinced - the bite marks don't align, you see. He also discovers that the menacing "Red Locust" has escaped from the jail in which he put him, and is now determined to recreate his swarm and gobble up all the food. Unsure as to whom he can trust, and with only a few hours before the plane lands, it falls to our intrepid detective to solve the crime. To be honest, the quality of the animation is nothing at all special and the narrative pinches things from just about everyone from "Charlie Chan" to "Sherlock Holmes" by way of "Indiana Jones" and "James Bond". It's also fair to say that "Janey" is really quite an irritating character, but as the story gets going it's a perfectly watchable family sleuthing adventure set amongst the world of bugs. The writing tries it's hand at comedy now and again, and there are one or two quite sharp witticisms, but otherwise this is just standard summertime cinema fayre that you won't recall after a week - even if you were in it.