Madame Web (2024)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Superhero movies still draw sizeable interest and pull from audiences. Madame Web is playing at a theater near you.
One of two things are going to happen - this movie will fade away very quickly or stories will be written about it for years to come.
A cinematic trainwreck you almost have to see to truly believe.
NO
Ladies, gentlemen, and those in between - we have reached the bottom. Madame Web is terrible on many, many levels.
I have to believe this is not the film turned in by the director, editor, sound team, and others who had a hand in making it. I have to believe this is studio wrangling at its most brazen and embarrassing.
Science indicates that time spent watching Madame Web is time you will never get back.
OUR REVIEW
Let’s start by acknowledging that making movies is hard. Really hard. I was reminded of this when a TikTok reviewer, Kit Lazer (a really great follow by the way), posted a video about this very fact. I think, as critics and film reviewers, we sometimes lose sight of this - though we shouldn’t. As anyone can attest, working in a creative space, in an effort to create and entertain, or simply to make art for others to view, consider, and consume is something we, as a society, easily take for granted.
In full disclosure, I acknowledge that the first draft of this Madame Web review was full of vitriol. I rarely have been so lost, frustrated, and eventually left with slack-jawed disbelief when watching a major studio’s film. In all ways, this is a bad movie. In some ways, so bad you can have fun with it. And perhaps, this will attain some Showgirls-like level of infamy in the months and years to come. I dunno. I think Madame Web is more likely going to become a punchline to a joke about how you botch a superhero movie. “I hope they don’t Madame Web this one!” or “It’s like when you sit down to watch [movie] and you get Madame Web instead!”
Something like that.
Anyway, Madame Web is a movie clearly ripped out of the hands of director S.J. Clarkson, who, after directing 22 years of television episodes and series, is making her cinematic debut. I have to believe (I want to believe) that editor Leigh Folsom Boyd would attest, if put on a witness stand, that a different cut of Madame Web existed under her watchful eyes. A talented editor, with a resume that includes the last two Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films, Folsom Boyd could not have turned in this cut.
I imagine someone in the sound department sat aghast realizing that nearly all of actor Tahar Rahim’s lines were badly, embarrassingly overdubbed in post-production, so much so that we see shots of him simply not talking, his mouth not synced with the words he’s saying, or random shots of him from behind or the side where we can’t see his mouth while talking. Plus, he sounds like he’s in a booth reading lines into a microphone. This sound mix, and blame whoever signed off on it, is one of the worst in recent memory.
I want to believe Madame Web is not the work of these talented creators. Because if Sony Pictures’ brass didn’t wrestle control of this film away from people, and this is what was turned in - I find myself going back to writing the kind of review I truly want to avoid.
As presented though, Madame Web is an abomination. It makes no sense. The film has no tone. The gaffes are mighty, the performers either miscast, checked out, or acting in a completely different film. There are at least a couple of instances where lines are repeated, which, as has been surmised online, may be an actor giving two line readings and then instead of picking the correct one, both were left in. I mean, I could go on and on.
Basically, this is an origin story introducing Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson). Cassie, as she is known, was born in a remote Peruvian jungle in 1973, when her mother, an anthropologist, gave birth to her in distress after being betrayed and shot by colleague Ezekiel Sims (Rahim in appearance, voice still TBD). Ezekiel steals a spider, long sought after among those who seek such things, and by the year 2003, he has nefarious goals, Spider-Man like abilities and the vision to see into the future.
Ezekiel also has not aged a day it seems in 30 years, but we move on.
Cassie meanwhile is a paramedic. Her best friend and work partner is Ben Parker (Adam Scott), not quite an uncle as his sister Mary (Emma Roberts) is close to having her first child. We learn she is having a boy, whose name is obscured by popping balloons and a sudden callout to an emergency.
Peter. The boy’s name is Peter, in case anyone is wondering.
After a near-fatal accident, Cassie sees clairvoyant abilities awaken within her and she starts having brief glimpses of a future where bad things happen to seemingly random people. This naturally collides with Ezekiel, who himself is having visions of three teenage girls, wearing Spidery outfits, who will eventually kill him. He decides to kill them first. Cassie starts seeing how he will do this. And then, fates align and she becomes a reluctant protector to the three girls, who she has randomly encountered at work, at a hospital, and in her apartment building.
The teenage girls - Anya, an immigrant worried about deportation (Isabela Merced), Julia, a rule following high schooler (Sidney Sweeney), and Mattie, a skateboarder (Celeste O’Connor) - are full of sass, questions, and confusion. By the time they come together in a stolen taxi, driven by Cassie, we too, ironically, are full of sass, questions, and confusion.
Beyond this set up, Madame Web slings webs of empty fortune. No one seems to be engaged, no one seems to care. The non-ADR line readings in the film feel as if they are being read off of a page at a first-view table read. There is no passion, no enthusiasm for a story and script credited to five individuals, of which two of them - Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless - have never surpassed 25% on the Tomatometer for any of their four previous films.
Perhaps my favorite character is that of Amaria (Zosia Mamet). Amaria sits at a makeshift set of monitors with access to every “camera in the city” to try and track down where Anya, Julia and Mattie happen to be. She never has a scene where she is not seated in front of the computers and softly pushes Ezekiel into discussing his diabolical plans while she furrows her brow once she realizes she is being paid to help target teenage girls her boss hopes to murder.
Nevertheless she persisted.
If the massive, blatant product placement doesn’t get you, the rushed, harried visual effects will bring frustration. The incomprehensible story notwithstanding, it is strange that a movie with so many nods and winks to the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man movies never outright connects those dots.
However, on the list of issues with Madame Web, that is admittedly way down the list.
Here’s hoping the stain of this washes away soon for all involved. But in a world where Morbius exists (written by Sazama and Sharpless, no less!) and the Miles Teller-led Fantastic Four made it to the big screen all those years ago, Madame Web may ultimately represent the nadir of the Sony/Marvel superhero partnership. A movie so bad, it makes you wonder if Sony has such little regard for its audience that they assume anything with a Marvel connection will draw money.
Let this be the bottom. Let everyone pause for a minute and think about what they have done. And let’s hope everyone can see into the future and recognize just how embarrassing a movie this truly is. In those reflections, may the blame also fall to the appropriate people.
Because…let’s remember friends…moviemaking is really hard work.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tahar Rahim, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott, Kerry Bishé, Zosia Mamet, José María Yazpik, Kathy-Ann Hart, Jill Hennessy
Director: S.J. Clarkson
Written by: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, S.J. Clarkson (screenplay); Kerem Sanga, Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless (story)
Release Date: February 14, 2024
Columbia Pictures