Madame Web would make Morbius look like a masterpiece [critique]

This little superhero Frankenstein's monster is by far the worst live-action Spider-Verse movie ever.

Friday is blockbuster night on Canal+. Bad luck this week, with the first broadcast of Madame Webby SJ Clarkson. A superheroine film derived from Sony's Spider-Man universe, which failed to convince anyone when it was released in theaters last Valentine's Day. Its main actresses learned their lesson: Dakota Johnson has promised she won't do it againwhile Sydney Sweeney publicly mocked of this flop.

Here is our review of Madame Web, to be discovered at your own risk, this evening in encrypted form.

After the two parts of Venom And MorbiusSony studio is scraping the bottom of the drawers of Marvel superheroes that it has the right to exploit in the cinema. Here is Madame Weba character from the Spider-Man comics and especially known to aficionados, which the film adapts in a very (very) free way: after an accident where she nearly dies, the ambulance driver Cassandra Web (Dakota Johnson, lethargic) discovers the ability to see fragments of the future. Coincidentally, it is at this moment that she crosses paths with three young women (played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O'Connor) who the mysterious Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim, who does what he can), endowed with superhuman powers, wants to kill.

A decent basis for a fantastic thriller, but to get there, the film takes impossible detours between the Amazon – where Cassandra's mother lost her life looking for a spider with magic venom – and a secret CIA program that comes at just the right time to justify the unfolding of the plot. The script, abracadabra as soon as it tries to justify its mythology, multiplies the inconsistencies and explanatory dialogues to the point of overdose. A real little Frankenstein monster, whose scars we constantly see (dialogues redubbed in post-production here, a sequence entirely cut there…). The editing must have been an ordeal.

Toxic

Boredom is looming, the actors are on autopilot and director SJ Clarkson proves incapable of catching up on the matter in terms of staging: Cassandra's power only inspires ultra-repetitive flash-forwards, while her illegible cutting of the action removes all tension from the rare moments that are supposed to provide adrenaline.

Without taste or smell, Madame Web has the feel of a prehistoric superhero movie, as if it had been locked away in a safe for 20 years before anyone dared to take it out. Moreover, for some reason that still escapes us, the action is supposed to take place in 2003 (a time that is here reduced to vintage telephones, Toxic Britney Spears's song in the background, Pepsi product placements everywhere and a giant poster of Beyoncé promoting the album Dangerously in Love. Nice reconstruction). It is high time that a big shot at Sony decided to pull the plug on this poor man's “Spider-Verse”.

Madame Web, by SJ Clarkson, with Dakota Johnson, Tahar Rahim, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor… Duration: 1 h 57. Here is its trailer:

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