Madame Web

This clairvoyant superhero origin story starring Dakota Johnson is a failure in just about every way.

Johnson tries to evoke Cassandra’s inner turmoil, and the scenes between her and Scott offer glimpses of a more promising project. But any potential gets buried early, beneath clumsy exposition, clunky special effects, and disconnected editing.

But where the dialogue needed wit and spark, it has the kind of will-this-do one-liners ("Hope the spiders were worth it, Mom!") and tired backstories you get when the characters are too flat to flesh out with rounded personalities.

The storytelling is... somewhere between pathetic and perfunctory. Largely perfunctory.

Sony and Marvel's latest entry in their shared Spider-Man cinematic universe has no better comparison than that of a rickety wooden coaster you'd find at a family-owned amusement park: brutal on the body and precariously constructed.

I almost admire the sheer lack of effort on display in the acting, storytelling, and set pieces. To say that Johnson in particular phoned this performance in would be an insult to Alexander Graham Bell.

Madame Web‘s tenuous grasp on the viewer is loosened significantly once it moves into its episodic, meandering midsection...

Madame Web is not fun and not entertaining. Most of all, it’s disappointing, because it teases you with possibilities that never come to bear.

Madame Web is destined for endless memes and the “so bad it’s good” treatment. People tried to do the same with Morbius, yet in this case, we have a movie that you can tell had a unique vision at first but was stumped by Sony’s usual studio antics.

...the reality of Madame Web is that its poor execution of storytelling, editing, and acting make it incredibly hard to get through.