Latest review from Flicks_withNick is the 2024 hot mess Madame Web. The movie stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb, Sydney Sweeney as Julia Cornwall, Celeste O’Connor as Mattie Franklin, Isabela Merced as Anya Corazon, and Adam Scott as Ben Parker (UNCLE BEN!). The movie is directed by S.J. Clarkson, and the movie was released on Valentine’s Day 2024. (I hope no guy took his first date to this movie, they’re probably not getting another date, due to poor life choices.)
The movie starts with a boring prologue with Casandra’s mom, Constance, in the Amazon while nine months pregnant with her. Constance is trying to find a rare spider that can give magical powers, and potentially cure diseases. She finally finds the spider, only to be betrayed by her aide Ezekiel. Shortly after, Constance gives birth to Casandra, and immediately passes away.
We cut to 2003 where Cassandra is now a paramedic. We learn that she’s great at her job, but has no social skills. While at work, she has a near fatal death, while rescuing people in a car, as they are falling off the bridge. She rescues everyone inside, but she’s still in the car, as the car falls off the bridge, and into the water. She was brought back to life by her coworker Ben, after almost drowning. After the near fatal death, she has visions or flash-forwards, where the future is repeated to her. The next day we get the cringe of all cringe scenes, where she’s at a baby shower, and they try to make comedy out of her awkwardness. She makes comments about her mom dying in childbirth, and everyone goes silent. Can’t blame the actor in this scene, she had nothing to work with. The shower also had a scene with very obvious product placement, where she wants a beer, but is given a Pepsi. Thank you Pepsi.
Cassandra has visions of three girls being attacked by a man dressed like a spider. Spider-man? She then takes it upon herself to help these girls, and runs from the man dressed like a spider. The rest of the movie is just a run and chase movie. There’s no interesting fight or action scenes, like a typical action movie would deliver. Included with this, is a laughable scene involving Brittany Spears’ Toxic song.
The final fight scene was uninspiring, and nothing was redeemed. An injury happened at the end of the movie, that was never addressed, and we’re supposed to just figure out Cassandra’s condition. From watching the trailers, you think this is an introduction to future super hero girls, but you should know, you only see flash forward scenes, for a total 30 seconds. So this was essentially a superhero prequel, for future superheroes, that the general public has no idea about. Can a movie introduce superheroes that the general public has no knowledge of and make it work? Yes…..think of Guardians of the Galaxy. They introduced characters that had compelling stories that people cared for. Hell, my sister even cried at the end of Guardians, so it can be done.
There’s nothing nice l can say about this movie. I left asking more questions than getting answers. The biggest question I had was, was this movie supposed to be set in the 90’s or in 2003? We’re they trying to align this movie with Tom Holland’s Spiderman, even though they’d never be in the same universe? The fashion, most of the music, and the atmosphere seemed to be more from the 90’s than the 2000’s. I don’t know these answers, but I hope something good comes from this. Studios will stop tent poling crappy movies, and start funding promising filmmakers that have interesting stories to tell. Is this the worst comic book movie of all time? Probably not, but it’s in the bottom five.
I give this movie a .8 / 5.
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TravelingbeebryantRN & Flicks_withNick 
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