Movie Review: Dakota Johnson gets entangled in “Madame Web”

Dakota Johnson is so miscast, so “off” in the title role of Sony/Marvel’s latest superhero movie that even her side-eyes seems affected, studied and practiced in front of the mirror before anybody yelled “Action!”

But co-star Tahir Rahim is so awful, cast as the villain, that one sits in slack-jawed awe at the number of times the production plainly and clumsily had him re-dub his lifeless line-readings.

From the looks of things, it’s a wonder anyone even bothered. “Madame Web” is joyless, a “Jonah Hex/Morbius” level disaster of a comic book movie.

Sony’s umpeenth trip into arachnophilia isn’t about multiverserses or living up to your responsibilities because Uncle Ben would have wanted you to or Mary Jane would expect nothing less. It’s about seeing the future as time stops long enough for our titular heroine to do that.

For the viewer, time stops a couple of minutes into “Madame Web” and doesn’t restart until we’ve stepped outside of the cinema in dumbfounded shock over the s–tstorm TV director S.J. Clarkson (“Jessica Jones”) presided over, that the admittedly-limited Johnson let herself be talked into and that content-starved theaters desperately need to be a hit.

One doesn’t wonder so much at where the time spent watching this went as ponder if one’s cell phone has any charge left as we’ve switched it on so many times to see if indeed time has stopped.

This film is a fiasco, pretty much from the start. A laughably derivative origin story takes us to spider-bite-central, the Amazon of 1973 and then Queens of 2003 where the daughter of a pregnant arachnologist bitten by a spider 30 years before discovers her “super” powers.

She can see into the future.

Johnson plays paramedic turned superheroine Cassie with as much swagger and attitude as we’ve come to expect from the clothed portion of her career.

Sydney Sweeney, still taking calls from her business manager about the cash cow that was “Anyone But You,” former “Dora the Explorer” Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” are three young women targeted by spider-obsessed villain Ezekial Sims (Rahim).

A near-death experience gave Cassie this foresight, and she saves the three teen strangers from their fate. And then she saves them again. And again.

She wasn’t able to prevent her boss (Mike Epps) from driving his ambulance into an accident, but once Cassie figures out she can change history/fate, she sets out to do just that.

The tedious tale told here is about Cassie’s learning curve, how she comes to understand her powers and use them to compensate for the fact that she’s not super strong, spidery or given a form-fitting body suit.

“Did I die?” Johnson’s Cassie asks her paramedic partner Ben (Adam Scott) will all the emotion she can summon. Which isn’t much, and never has been, to be honest.

Sweeney is given a short skirt and big glasses and even less to play than her swimsuited turn in “Anyone But You” demanded, and further underwhelms.

The dialogue is dusty, inane and laughless. The period piece setting may have some further purpose than showcasing the mostly ’80s vintage cars, the still-standing Blockbuster video stores and an attempted table dance to Britney’s “new” hit, “Toxic,” but damned if I can see one.

Still, in the interest of bucking up the theaters, which are playing to empty houses these days, just let me suggest that if you’re still into superhero movies, go see it and tell me I’m wrong.

A flatlining genre just lost its cardiac paddles over this one.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Mike Epps, Tahir Rahim, Adam Scott and Emma Roberts.

Credits: Directed by S.J. Clarkson, scripted by Matt Sazam, Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker, based on the Marvel comic book character. A Sony/Marvel release.

Running time: 1:57

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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