Madame Web

by Philip Price

Photo: Sony Pictures

Director: S.J. Clarkson
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tahar Rahim & Sydney Sweeney
Rated: PG-13 (violence/action & language)
Runtime: 1 hour & 56 minutes

​Contrary to popular opinion, the chief issue with “Madame Web” is not how badly it's executed or how egregiously awful it is in general, but more how offensively boring it is. For what is presumably a superhero origin story this movie - which clocks in at four minutes short of two full hours - feels like little more than a first-act set-up until maybe the final 20 minutes. There are stakes, things are happening, and we're invested in the characters to the same extent we are strangers in Walmart who we hope to make it home safely, but there is nothing here to suggest any of what transpires on screen is effective at anything besides causing an existential crisis. Beyond the expected complaints of obvious plot holes (of which there are plenty) and terrible dialogue, the film’s more fascinating fumbles are that of Tahar Rahim's entire performance being voiceover and/or ADR, his choice to wear no shoes on the subway and Dakota Johnson's very Dakota Johnson ramble about how her mom died during childbirth smack dab in the middle of Emma Roberts’ baby shower.

If this were simply a ‘90s-set drama about a woman who demonstrates signs of being clairvoyant in what she believes are keys to unlocking and understanding her long lost mom then this would still be a Lifetime-level movie, but it might have stood a chance at being more compelling than “Madame Web” ends up due solely to all the spider stuff this film is forced to include. There is no “Spider-Man” in this movie per se as Rahim’s Ezekiel Sims only first appeared in the comics two years before when this film is set, but outside of this character complicating both his own life, Johnson’s Cassandra Webb's life, and the lives of the other three young, future spider-women featured in this film the only main concern this antagonist made me consider was, “If this guy’s body lets out a neurotoxin would the government lady he seduced early in the film to get access to technology not yet invented in 2003 not have been dead long before he purposefully poisons her or does the toxin only come out of his hand and not any other specific orifices? Are condoms neurotoxin resistant?” Maybe that was it. The point is, Sims could have easily been written as a Max Cady-like baddie if we’re shooting for the Lifetime synergy and I would have much preferred that schlocky kind of genre storytelling (terrible ADR and all) to this waste of resources in service to nothing more than desperate market forces.