Fifty Shades of Meh.
It gives me no pleasure to report this because we could use some fresh and original superhero adaptations on the big screen these days, but the Dakota Johnson-starring “Madame Web” is one of the worst comic book movies I’ve ever seen.
Everything about it seems flat and artificial and contrived, from the limp dialogue to the annoying special effects to some surprisingly uninspired performances, given the talent level of the cast. Even some of the actors come across as if they’d rather be anywhere else but in front of a blue screen, pretending to fight a lackluster and ill-defined Marvel villain while straining to be heard over all the audio pyrotechnics.
Oh, what a mangled web they’ve weaved.
“Madame Web” kicks off with a cheesy and poorly shot prologue set in the Amazon in 1973, with Kerry Bishé as Constance Webb, a nine-months-pregnant researcher desperately seeking to discover a legendary spider with magical venom that could unlock, I don’t know, the cures for diseases and the mysteries of life and all that jazz. When Constance finally finds the spider, she is betrayed and shot by her hired security expert, one Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). Constance dies while giving birth to a baby girl.
Flash forward to 2003 and Queens, where Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is working as a paramedic, with a bewildered-looking Adam Scott as her best friend and partner, Ben. (Ben! Hmmmm. Or maybe not hmmm.) Now, we know it’s 2003 because we see a terribly photoshopped billboard for Beyoncé’s “Dangerously in Love,” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic” is prominently featured, and at one point Cassie says, “I gotta get home in time for ‘Idol,’ ” even though nothing about her cynical, hardbitten character would indicate she’d be a fan of “American Idol” or even own a TV.
With the “Fifty Shades of Grey” star doing her best to let us know SHE knows this is all camp nonsense, Cassie starts to experience jarring and often violent mini-flash-forwards to the immediate future. These constant visions are rendered through the use of a split diopter lens as well as some audio stingers that result in some of the most grating sequences I’ve ever experienced. Each one of these scenes should come with two caplets of Tylenol.
In this same timeline, Ezekiel is experiencing his own visions, in which he is killed by three future Spider-Women. In “present day,” they’re still teenage girls who have yet to become superheroes. Ezekiel’s plan is to kill them NOW before they can kill him LATER.
Through a strange series of coincidences that might not be coincidences, Cassie meets the trio and vows to protect them. Celeste O’Connor is Mattie Franklin, Isabela Merced is Anya Corazon and Sydney Sweeney is Julia Cornwall. They are all paper-thin characters required by the script to behave like absolute idiots and constantly put themselves in danger even when they know some sort of ceiling-crawling maniac is trying to kill them. After a series of clunky, poorly choreographed and fake-looking battle sequences, we get a tease to a sequel that most likely will never happen. If we’re lucky.
