‘Madame Web’ is streaming on Netflix, if you need a good laugh
“Madame Web,” the Marvel movie starring Dakota Johnson as the titular character, is now streaming on Netflix for those looking for a good laugh. The movie, which is the latest in a string of Marvel disasters has a 26 Metacritic score, and an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It is not a movie one can watch earnestly and enjoy. If you insist on trying, however, there are a few things you should know:
“Madame Web” is even worse than you’ve heard.
It’s a terrible movie that you essentially have to watch twice since Madame Web’s power is the ability to see things before they happen. So we, the viewers, see the scenes both when Madame Web experiences them and then when they actually happen.
Also, “Madame Web” is primarily about Pepsi, as best as I can tell.
To save my life, I could not tell you the plot intricacies of this movie. And I’ve seen it twice. But since most of the movie is scenes repeating, I’ve actually seen it four times. Still, I have only a vague understanding of what happens. I’ll try to explain, though not without spoilers.
The story begins in the Peruvian Amazon in 1973. A pregnant woman is hunting for a specific spider because it can cure a bunch of diseases. The hunt ends in a shootout because of a mustachioed villain named Ezekiel who wants the spider venom for his own evil plan. What that plan is is never explained. Suddenly, a bunch of humans wearing nets climb down from the tree tops, rescue the injured pregnant woman, and help her deliver her baby right before she dies.
Fast forward 30 years to 2003 when that baby is Dakota Johnson who is working as a paramedic. During a rescue, she momentarily dies underwater before she is revived by her partner, played by Adam Scott. During her brush with the other side, she sees visions of webs and scenes from the future.
This is, as far as I can tell, the birth of her power. Which, for the first half of the movie, is a pretty useless power. She can’t prevent the death of a co-worker even though she sees his car accident in advance. She does eventually learn how to leverage her powers to save three teenage girls — played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor — who Ezekiel is trying to assassinate because he believes they will someday murder him.
In the process of saving the girls, Madame Web is accused of kidnapping them, and so now she is wanted by the police. This fugitive status, however, somehow does not prevent her from flying to Peru without issue, back to the rainforest where she meets the leader of the spider people who explain her powers. Namely, that, using the web in her mind, she can be in multiple places at once. Also, in a vision she learns that her mother was in the Amazon seeking a cure for her fetus’ incurable neuromuscular disorder. Not because she was a negligent parent, as Madame Web had always assumed. With this new appreciation for her mother, she returns to America, reunites with the teens (toward whom she now acts much more motherly) and together they defeat the villain in a fireworks factory.
If that’s all confusing to read, I promise it was exponentially more confusing to watch.
The filmmakers seem to care more about viewers understanding that the movie is set in 2003 than they do about viewers understanding the story. There’s a CGI Blockbuster on the street in Queens. A Beyonce poster from her first solo album. Britney Spears’ “Toxic” on the radio, and at one point Dakota Johnson says, “I just want to go home and watch ‘Idol’,” as in “American Idol,” the country’s favorite show in 2003. This is one of many hilariously strange things Dakota Johnson says in the film. She talks to herself a lot. In fact, most of the exposition lies in her monologues when she’s all alone, or talking to her cat.
In what is probably my favorite, and by that I mean silliest, sequence in the film, Madame Web visits the optometrist to find out whether her visions of the future might be related to her eyesight. The eye doctor tells her that her eyes are perfectly healthy and that the visions are likely caused by the trauma from when she nearly died underwater. The optometrist instructs her to go home and get some rest, and then gets strangely specific by telling her to watch old movies. So, in what appears to be July, Madame Web decides to watch “A Christmas Carol.” As Ebenezer Scrooge tries to bargain with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, she says, “Hate to break it to you Scrooge, but you can’t change anything.” She says this to the television screen.
This film begins subpar and spirals into nonsensical chaos, while always reminding viewers of its corporate sponsor. In every scene where there is food, there is Pepsi or a product made by Pepsi. In almost every scene where there is not food, there is Pepsi. I have to assume Pepsi paid a hefty sum for product placement. I also have to assume this was a decision they now regret.
The product placement is so obvious that it’s ultimately the “S” in a giant Pepsi sign that leads to the villain’s demise, at least in the realm of the film. His actual demise began in production, when the filmmakers decided to dub over all his lines and not bother to fix the instances where the movements of his mouth do not match the words coming out of them. But it’s not the worst performance of the film.
That honor belongs to Dakota Johnson. The writing, which seems to be generated by the worst version of AI in a foreign language and then poorly translated back into English, is made worse by Johnson’s delivery. It’s like watching a third grader try and do Hamlet, but that third grader is being paid $5 million dollars.
“Madame Web” is rated PG-13 for moderate violence and mild profanity. I would be comfortable showing it to my kids who are 9 and 12, or any kid over age 8 if I didn’t think it would lead to them asking approximately 10,000 unanswerable questions about the plot and characters.
Everything about “Madame Web” is terrible. But I had a great time all four times I watched this film. It’s absurd enough to be entertaining, which I appreciate. If a movie can’t be good, it might as well be so bad it’s fun. And indeed, I laughed more in “Madame Web” than I think I have in any comedy, ever.
