In theaters

I SPY. Directed by Betty Thomas, written by Marianne Wibberley, Cormac Wibberley, Jay Scherick and David Ronn, 96 minutes, rated PG-13.

Remember the mid-1960s television show “I Spy,” in which Bill Cosby and Robert Culp broke the rules by becoming prime time’s first interracial crime-fighting team, thus paving the way for such other shows as “Mission: Impossible” and “The Mod Squad” to hit the airwaves?

The series, which has occasionally been in reruns since it last aired in 1968, was a milestone for Cosby – it made him a star and allowed him the distinction of being the first black actor to have a leading role in a weekly television show.

But just as in Scott Silver’s 1999 feature film version of “The Mod Squad,” which had a hip, all-star cast and plenty of good intentions – neither of which, incidentally, was enough to overcome its weak script and soggy direction – director Betty Thomas (“The Brady Bunch Movie,” “Dr. Dolittle”) succumbs to the same fate in “I Spy.”

The film’s title suggests a singular vision but, go figure, it has none, which isn’t a surprise when you consider it’s credited to four writers – always a red flag.

With the exception of a few memorable moments between Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson – who are, to say the least, so well-schooled in the buddy genre, they bring the movie what energy and few laughs it has – the film is mostly a drag, a second-rate effort with top-rate talent whose biggest risk seems to be a reversal of race.

Indeed, instead of Murphy taking the Cosby role, as you might expect, he plays Culp’s Kelly Robinson, a middleweight boxing champ and not a tennis star, as in the series, while Wilson, blond and detached within an inch of his life, plays Cosby’s Alexander Scott, now an idiot spy smitten with fellow spy Rachel Wright (Famke Janssen), and who must use Robinson’s help to solve a case.

The case in question involves the pending sale of the Switchblade, a stolen U.S. stealth bomber about to hit the black market in Budapest by Arnold Gundars, a sneering international arms dealer played by a sneering Malcolm McDowell in a fright wig.

Some might question the logic behind the president of the United States personally enlisting an egomaniacal boxer like Robinson to help a bumbling spy like Scott thwart the sale of an invisible, billion-dollar war plane, as is the case here, but why look for logic in a movie without any? Besides, “I Spy” nearly knocks itself out with its strained explanation.

Grade: C

On video and DVD

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS. Directed by Ellory Elkayem, written by Elkayem, Jesse Alexander and Randy Kornfield, 99 minutes, rated PG-13.

Leave it to Hollywood to try to keep spinning gold from toxic waste. Ever since the mid-1950s, when B-movie classics such as “Them!” “Tarantula” and “The Deadly Mantis” proved there’s nothing financially itsy-bitsy about big bugs gone berserk, Hollywood has delivered a wealth of creature-features starring the leggy beasts.

Now, the toxic creepy-crawlies have come creeping again, this time in the form of Ellory Elkayem’s “Eight Legged Freaks,” a postmodern homage to the B-movies of yesteryear that features scores of huge, mutant spiders taking over the woefully misnamed town of Prosperity, Ariz.

Obviously, any film that features spiders as large as a city block isn’t going to be for everyone, certainly not those who prefer their spiders beneath the heel of their shoe or at the business end of a can of Raid.

Still, for those who dig this sort of thing, “Eight Legged Freaks” is mindless fun, especially during its lively first half, which has a great time winking at the absurdity of its premise before getting kneecapped by repetition midway through.

In the film, David Arquette is Chris McCormick, a mining engineer who returns to Prosperity after his father’s death to collect his inheritance – a gold mine, no less – and to rekindle a romance with his old flame, Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer), who’s now Prosperity’s no-nonsense sheriff and a single mother of two, Ashley (Scarlett Johansson) and Mike (Scott Terra).

Unfortunately for Chris, his plans to put the squeeze on Sam are temporarily shelved when a barrel of toxic waste is accidentally dumped into a pond, an event that inadvertently leads to one man’s spider collection mutating out of control and viciously mugging the folks of Prosperity.

As produced by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the duo who botched 1998’s “Godzilla,” “Eight Legged Freaks” pilfers from a host of other films, particularly George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” whose influence is realized at the end when the townsfolk, fleeing the spiders, take refuge at a shopping mall and realize some unexpected savings.

Specifically, their lives.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.