Review: 'Madame Web' is simply Spider Girls

"Madame Web" is a movie filled with ambulance action, table dancing and - this is more like it - a tribe of Amazonian spider people. Very Indy-ish, and very promising. But then there's also an infestation of product placement of the most shamelessly brazen sort, and you marvel that studios give a thumbs-up to this sort of thing and then wonder why their movies die on the vine.

The movie's title character, played here by Dakota Johnson, first appeared in Marvel's "Amazing Spider-Man" comics in 1980, and she's kind of interesting -- a blind pre-cog who can see into the future and possibly change it. She's very super in her native format.

Not so much in this movie, though. Here she's almost completely pre-super, and largely preoccupied with looking after three bratty young acolytes (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, Isabela Merced) who, as we eventually see (and instantly guess), are on their way to becoming fully suited-up Spider-Women later on in what Sony Pictures and Marvel's movie arm must have been hoping would mark a return to the long-ago glory days of the Spidey franchise. But as an attempt to kickstart a new Spiderman dynasty, the movie falls seriously short; the story is virtually all intro, with not a lot of payoff in Spidey action. None, actually -- although we're clearly in Spidey's world here, the celebrated web-slinger never puts in an actual appearance.

Judging by the critical hostility that has greeted "Madame Web," the possibility of future adventures now seems iffy. But the movie does indicate a way forward for this sort of picture in a time of mounting superhero fatigue among moviegoers. (Presumably people who've paid to sit through such widely reviled films as "The Marvels" and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," the piddling "Morbius" -- another attempted Spider-Man spinoff -- and the awful "Eternals.") Introducing three fresh young super-women into the Spider-Man universe would seem like a surefire way of reigniting interest out in the youth market. And it would help mightily if the producers could hold on to Dakota Johnson for any future installments -- her air of serene self-possession in the face of all the movie's limp CGI and lunkhead dialogue ("When you take on the responsibility, great power will come") is wonderfully calming. If she's not appalled by the movie's mad editing and muddled plot (two of the picture's three writers also worked on "Morbius"), why should we worry?

The story begins in Peru in 1973, where a woman named Constance (Kerry Bishe) is researching a tribe of spider-worshippers. Assisting her, for reasons unclear, is a treacherous character named Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who is bedeviled by a recurring dream about three young women he's convinced will one day kill him. Better he kills them first, he figures.

Constance, who is pregnant, gets bitten by a spider and later gives birth to a daughter she names Cassandra (Johnson). The little girl grows up to be an EMT, and we first meet her wheeling around Manhattan in an ambulance alongside her partner, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). There is a lot of racing about from one emergency to another, and since Cassie can see into the future -- and must then relive what she and we have already seen -- the movie begins to feel padded.

Soon we re-encounter Ezekiel, who's also in New York now and busily monitoring the movements of Cassandra and the three girls with whom she's become encumbered (for reasons purely misterioso). Ezekiel and a sidekick named Amaria (Zosia Mamet) are employing the usual sort of all-seeing computer setup to locate the three young women. They eventually find them taking part in a big action scene down in the subway, where everybody gets to meet a sort of Evil Spider-Man (actually Ezekiel in a black-and-red supersuit), who is of course in a homicidal mood.

The story sprawls. Cassie is at pains to announce her concern for the safety of the three girls now that Ezekiel is on their trail; but then she'll run off to South America or someplace, leaving them on their own -- and leaving us to cope with all the commercial shillery rearing up around what seems like every corner. There's a sudden Beyonce billboard visible in one scene (Beyonce is signed to Sony's Columbia Records label). And when we take a break to attend a cookout with Ben and his pregnant sister Mary (checking off their familiar Spidey-world names), we can't help noticing that everyone is drinking Pepsi-Cola -- a warmup for the movie's big finish, which takes place atop a huge Pepsi billboard on the bank of the Hudson River. I'm not making this up.

In order to really work, the movie would have had to give us a look at the three fledgling Spider-Women learning their trade and having their first crime-fighting adventures. Did someone really think it best to hold off on providing that sort of basic audience pleasure, to save it for some future installment that, as now seems entirely possible, no one may ever request.

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Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.