2/17/24 - Madame Web (2024) - 2+/10

Some films are so bad they are fun, reveling in their lack of taste, skill, or means. Some films are just painful to watch, missing camp and capabilities all together and delivering wretched dreck. Madame Web is neither, rather bringing boredom and poor spectacle for a completely lame and pointless exercise in “coulda not shoulda”.

Directed like a cockeyed editing room reject on crank, Dakota Johnson is winning some unimagined award for dullest protagonist who expresses the least charisma and dedication to what she is doing while she is surrounded by annoying flat shades of possible characters, action so asinine Yahoo Serious looks believable, and both a script & plot rife with enough holes and jumps it could stand in for any 80s side scrolling arcade failure. All the while it never extends an olive branch to the audience to bring them into the silly or recognize its bloated shortcomings - no, it plays it straight as it descends into “too unenthusiastic to be serious” lackluster banality.

The story is unimpeachably bad, but it could be massaged into excitement or enticement with the right guiding hand but the director, cinematographer, and editor cement this as unquestionably awful. The technical elements are cartoonishly mediocre. The shot choices would be something special for a small child new to modern GoPro/drone/anywhere dolly camera options or for a surreal indie art pic about a bird’s journey, but with MW it dismays as much as it disorients. It is then sloppily edited together, head-spinningly stitching scenes together in a way to dilute the tiniest amount of drama that could be present. Visually and cinematically it is lapses and failures alone.

Is it dumb? Like it fell from the top of the stupid tree and smacked every idiot branch on its descent. I can’t recall a line reading that rang true, a character action that made sense, or a plot point that would fit in a “real movie”. Harping on the ease & speed in finding a mythical lost Spider-people tribe in the Peruvian jungle because the story needed it, the total lack of conviction or push back of the 3 pseudo-orphaned to-be-spider-powered teen trio in the face of kidnapping, murder, and precognition, or the wealthy spider-antagonist who has his own Lucius Fox-from Girls sci-magik 3 women de-aged from his dream whose only plot is to murder them all at once - seems tertiary and reductive. We can all see how dumb all of that is. No, what really bugged me was tying this all into Spider-Man lore, which not only presents as crass and delegitimizing but disrespectful to the potency SM can & has had. The Venom(s) I wasn’t a fan of and Morbius was silly bad, but nether felt like they were spitting in the Kool Aid of the Spider-verse like this. It’s not because it’s women but it’s the trivializing of what makes SM special into f*cking punchlines, not letting these women be real characters let alone heroes themselves, but also tying that mythos into theirs which simply deflates the whole balloon in completely unexplored mumbo jumbo. This film is a subtraction by addition

I feel like I should say something; I would question the presence of Johnson as a below the line billing let alone top star. Her detachment and lack of desire to hold sway on screen come through at every turn. It felt like her direction was non-existent and her grasp on what she was doing flimsy at best, so maybe it wasn’t her fault. Is Sweeney a star? Idk, but she was less than forgettable here. I wouldn’t even know the antagonist name if it wasn’t for reading the comics, while all those not named “Ben Parker” are nigh-anonymous.

This does make me contemplate its brethren at the bottom of the comic book toilet bowl. Howard the Duck is creepy and weird but has perverse charm. Catwoman is a wacky monster that smiles at itself and its own foolishness. Elektra was well meaning in its vacancy while The Spirit kind of lets you slack your jaw in how awful and tasteless it is. MW provides no smiles, few winks, and less handholds to make it relatable, understandable, or remotely enjoyable. There are some laughs of shock in what they are failing at but it is more of a grind than ride.

I’ve ranted much longer than this forgotten glass of stale milk deserves. No reason to laugh or cry over this spilled blunder.