Movie Reviews, Film

Movie Review: MADAME WEB Starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott

Posted: February 14, 2024 at 8:32 am / by Steve Kelley / comments (0)

tags: Adam Scott, Dakota Johnson, Madame Web, Marvel, MCU, Spider-man, Sydney Sweeney

Kevin: Hey Steve, you want to review a movie tomorrow?

Steve: I dunno, I still need to work on some other reviews, and I have to get up at 5 Wednesday morning. What movie?

It's gonna be great! It's got...award winning people...

...what movie?

Madame Web

Nah, I'm good. I gotta wash my hair that night.

Please

Well, when does it come out? Hopefully Friday so I have time to write it?

Kevin: Nah, it comes out Wednesday.

Steve: Well that's just silly. Do I get to bring a +1?

...

...

Maybe there'll be free popcorn?

I hate you.

I can live with that. Thank you!

Steve: meme of dogs reading, "don't talk to me or my son ever again"

Kevin: Haha so how was it?

Well, a lot like me, actually. Started off early showing some promise, but squandered it quickly en route to a incomprehensibly bad and abrupt finish.

What a terrible day to be literate.

I'll say this, it has its moments where I thought maybe it wasn't too bad. There's a moment on the subway early on that could have had a cool little Predator 2-style showdown, but it quickly veers from that.

Kevin: Well that's pretty disappointing. How was teh acting?
the*

Steve: Eh. I mean, Dakota Johnson was decent as Cassie Webb. Maybe a little too dramatic at times, but she had some good moments. But the other three ladies (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, and Isabela Merced) didn't have much to work with.

Ezekiel Sims was eh at best, too. He's a fine actor, but at times he had a hint of an accent that disappeared in other scenes. It was frustrating.

Oh dang. Well, how about the special effects? Hopefully it was at least visually entertaining?

Steve: The visuals were terrific
Terrible*
Sorry, Autocorrect. The film is set in 2003, and strangely enough, so is the level of visual effects.

Kevin: Oh jeez. So I'm guessing you didn't care for the story either?

It is a very...condensed story. It's a somewhat abridged origin story, but here's the thing: I'm not a huge comic book guy. I know the pop culture stuff, but nothing esoteric.

I'd never even heard of Madame Web until the trailers started coming out. So without really knowing her background, I don't have much to compare it to.

Kevin: I mean, sure, but you enjoyed other superhero movies, right? Even without knowing all their backstories?

Steve: So here's the thing. And that's a great point. But in all those other movies, it felt like something was truly at stake. A city full of people, the earth, the universe.

There's never any real sense of that in Madame Web. The only people in danger are three obscure characters that I'd wager a lot of people aren't familiar with.

Rahim's character basically has one motivating factor: hunting down and killing three teenage girls that kill him in his dreams every night. That... that's it.

Kevin: Well dang. Was there anything you actually liked about it?

Steve: Umm it's under two hours. And no post-credits scenes, so you don't have to sit around.

LOL it's really that bad?

Lemme ask you this. You remember when Morbius came out, how everyone loved it instantly?

Ha, not quite.

Exactly. Yet somehow, someone saw the reactions to Morbius and thought, "IT'S MORBIN' TIME AGAIN. But with spiders." No. No it is not.

D-