However you, the spiders or anyone would like to spin it, Sony’s new shallow superhero spectacle Madame Web isn’t the worst movie of the year. But it’s certainly close.
The film is stacked with a lazy, barren script and garish CGI effects - yet the disappointment isn’t that the movie is laughably bad. Truthfully, it’s the lack of action or intriguing plot that simply make it boring to watch.
Based on a nonsensical, time-travelling Spider-Man spinoff, the character of Cassandra Webb and her never-fully explained superpowers are at best a far-fetched concept from Sony Pictures on making as much money as possible from their more popular…well, Spider-Man franchise.
What Madame Web is missing, however, are any of the elements that make the Spider-Man movies so likeable. There’s no humour in its main character, no suspense from a high-stakes villain, no conflict sourced from newly found superpowers, nor any brightness from the New York setting.
Every detail in director S. J. Clarkson’s world of female spider-themed heroes is shying away from sharing anything exciting from the superhero or science fiction genres at all, and instead it’s a slow, melodramatic bore.
The cast on screen moves without organic purpose or clear actions to play, and it’s especially obvious in its four stars Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor. All four women have shown their talent and conviction as actors in better movies, and all of them here are being coached to be as lifeless and broad as possible.
Every bad movie starts with a weak screenplay, and writing team Matt Sazama and Burk Shapeless have proven with their last four movies their ineptitude in writing films: Dracula Untold, Gods of Egypt and The Last Witch Hunter are all just as messy and dull. They even wrote Morbius, 2022’s infamously bad superhero flop.
At the end of the day, despite its lack of substance, the fireworks factory battle finale is still a (too late) reprieve of joy and senseless action. It’s a flawed film, but there are some small merits and it’s certainly better than the aforementioned Morbius.
If you as a viewer are really invested in the pop culture conversation of how Sony is overplaying their desperate play to make more Spider-movies, I’m tempted to even recommend you go to the theatre and see it. Madame Web is a big misfire, but even some train wrecks are fun to watch if you let your inhibitions go.
Madame Web
3 out of 10
PG, 1hr 56mins. Superhero Sci-Fi Drama.
Directed by S. J. Clarkson.
Starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Emma Roberts and Adam Scott.
Now Playing at Film.Ca Cinemas, Cineplex Winston Churchill & VIP and Cineplex Oakville & VIP.
