#12: MADAME WEB

 

STARRING: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts and Adam Scott. Written by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker and S.J. Clarkson, from a story by Kerem Sanga, Matt Szama and Burk Sharpless. Directed by S.J. Clarkson. Budget $80 million dollars. Running time 116 days, or at least it felt like it, but turned out to only be 116 minutes, still that's time I'm never getting back, despite me asking the usher on the way out if I could.

This took five people to write. Five, and yet not one of them, clearly, would recognise a well-structured film with believable dialogue if it ran them over and asked the way to the Syd Field screenwriting workshop.

Directed by S.J Clarkson, a British director who previously directed the likes of Doctors, Casualty and Eastenders.

SPOILER ALERT

The 'plot' sees Cassandra Web (Dakota Johnson) orphaned at birth after her heavily pregnant mother is shot in a Peruvian rain forest by the baddy, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). She's left to die but is rescued by the mysterious Tree Spider People of Peru.

Cut to 30 years later and a 'mummy issue' Cassandra is now driving an ambulance and 'work' partnered with a certain Ben Parker who takes his responsibility very seriously. Naturally Cassie as she's known is a grumpy old bag who develops psychic powers after she almost drowns. Straight away she's predicting death at every turn and later at a firework factory fire in the Pepsi Cola warehouse she foresees the death of a work colleague who then promptly dies right behind her in an absolutely hilarious fashion. 

Meanwhile psycho baddy, Ezekiel is having visions of three spider themed superheroines killing him horribly at some point in the future and so goes out to kill the girls before they kill him. Trouble is, the three girls in question, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O'Connor are currently just three over entitled and deeply irritating teenagers who are so ego-centric you actually hope Ezekiel kills them. 

Through a staggering convenient chain of events, the four girls end up on a train with Ezekiel hot on their trail who promptly and without reason, other than he's the baddy, kills a whole bunch of police men. Luckily, Cassie rescues the girls, and steals a yellow cab. For the rest of this staggeringly dull piece-of-shit movie, the four girls take a deeply boring drive around New York, while mopey Cassie struggles with what to do with the three girls she's kidnapped and the girls go out of their way to put themselves in danger, just so Cassie can save them.

Then at the end of the second act she pisses off to Peru to find out about her secret origin before jetting back for the showdown at the fire damaged Pepsi Cola factory firework factory where she saves the girls, kills Ezekiel and then takes another bath in the Hudson where she's blinded and paralysed from the waist down and becomes Madame Web and Peter Parker is born.

SPOILER ALERT OVER

Then the film ends and you realise that your life is shorter by 116 minutes. 

This commits the single worse crime any film can commit, it's boring. Although not staggering boring, or even mind-numbingly boring, just boring. The sort of boring that saps your will to live. Nothing about this film is good. The acting is boring and only poor Adam Scott brings anything to the party as a young Ben Parker who'll one day teach Peter about power and responsibility. 

Dakota Johnson plays the role of a 30 year-old Cassandra Web as if she's an old woman, who whines and strops around telling off the three teenage girls who are so grating you relish each time Ezekiel kills them in one of Web's premonitions and groan when Web rescues them from that fate. 

The direction is perfunctory at best and it's obvious that Clarkson cut her teeth making shit afternoon soap operas, the film has no flair or dynamic centre. The film shuffles along until the ending finally drags its dreary carcass into view as we revisit the firework factory for the obligatory showdown. What follows is a truly dull fight to the death and that elicits not one iota of excitement. 

Then after 10 minutes of credits the film ends without a single post credit sting to add one last big fat dollop of disappointment on your shoulders, just think if I'd known there wasn't a post credit sting I could have saved myself ten minutes of my life. I bet I'll wish I had those precious minutes back when I'm lying on my death bed. 

There are a few unintentionally funny moments, that got big laughs, like the death of her colleague, any time the baddy turns up and most amazingly the whole trip to Peru.

Sadly this isn't one of those bad films that's so bad it's funny, this is one of those boring, generic and dull movies that's so bad you despair at the state of modern Hollywood cinema.

A lot of late has been written about Super-hero fatigue, and with crap like this thrown up over us, it's hardly surprising. This is a film with nothing to recommend it. 

Boring crap. 2/10