The film was only released yesterday (Wednesday 14th February), but already, many are writing it off as the worst movie of 2024 for its clunky plot, bizarre setting and awkward dialogue \u2013 \u201cthe Cats: The Movie of superhero movies\u201d, wrote Rolling Stone<\/a>.<\/p>\n And yet, when the end credits started to roll, I couldn\u2019t help but think that Madame Web was just a whole lot of fun \u2013 even if that fun was completely<\/em> unintentional.<\/p>\n Madame Web centres on Cassandra \u2018Cassie\u2019 Webb (Dakota Johnson<\/a>), a socially awkward, hugely stylish and entirely entertaining paramedic, who has struggled to form emotional connections with anyone past her co-worker Ben (Adam Scott) and the stray cat that she lets into her apartment, due to her predictably tragic backstory (her mother died while researching spiders in the rainforest, obviously).<\/p>\n Cassie\u2019s life is changed dramatically after she suffers a near-death experience and develops psychic powers, and the film follows the fallout of such abilities after she is thrown together with high-schoolers Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced) and Mattie (Celeste O\u2019Connor) and is forced to protect them from the spider venom-powered villain Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), who is trying to kill them.<\/p>\n Set in a strangely ambiguous year in the early 2000s, amid the rise of Britney Spears and, apparently, Blockbuster Video, Madame Web looks back on a time when the world wasn\u2019t so serious about its superhero movies.<\/p>\n Before the MCU<\/a> delivered sci-fi sleuths with high-grossing blockbuster hits like Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Endgame<\/a>, terrible comic book movies were the superhero norm.<\/p>\n Think back to 1997\u2019s Batman & Robin, 2004\u2019s Catwoman and 2005\u2019s Fantastic Four. They were kitsch, camp, never boring, and didn\u2019t take themselves too seriously.<\/p>\n They were enjoyed by their audiences for merely being two hours of pure entertainment, filled with old-school CGI and a handful of snazzy Halloween costume ideas.<\/p>\n In that way, Madame Web follows suit. It\u2019s the kind of film you\u2019d have switched on in 2003 while babysitting your 10-year-old brother with your best friend \u2013 easy enough to follow while you throw popcorn at each other\u2019s faces and cry laughing over embarrassing school antics.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the kind of film that\u2019s playing in the background when you muse over fond childhood memories, wishing you could return to a time when you weren\u2019t so cynical.<\/p>\n And, unlike its recent critically slated predecessors, including Morbius<\/a> \u2013 a tedious mess that somehow attempted to pose itself as a thriller \u2013 and Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom<\/a> \u2013 which suffered from a serious lack of journey \u2013 Madame Web is never boring.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to follow, well-acted (despite its occasional awkwardness) and, at times, is even a bit touching (take the scene when Cassie teaches teenage trio Julia, Anya and Mattie how to perform CPR, for example).<\/p>\n Littered with regular, if borderline accidental, humour, Madame Web also proved how much of a comedic genius Dakota Johnson really is \u2013 not that we didn\u2019t know that already.<\/p>\n From lying about loving limes<\/a> when she was actually allergic to them (or was she?) to delivering one of the most iconic lines ever heard on The Ellen DeGeneres Show<\/a>, to confessing that she likes to sleep for 14 hours a night<\/a>, there are lots of moments in which Johnson lends her much-loved humour to Cassie Webb, with charming consequences.<\/p>\n Obviously, Madame Web has its problems. It would be a complete lie to say it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n It suffers from a predictable second half, aggressive product placement, some more-than-cringe-worthy dialogue (specifically during the scene where Cassie has a vision of her deceased mother), and an underdeveloped antagonist (does anyone actually know why he was perpetually barefoot?).<\/p>\n In many ways, it\u2019s bad. In some, it\u2019s worse than that.<\/p> Yet, in a climate where Oscar bait is becoming the new normal \u2013 think the likes of Oppenheimer<\/a> and Maestro<\/a>, for example \u2013 and everyone\u2019s top four on Letterboxd are Parasite, American Psycho, Fight Club and Inception, it was always going to be hard for Madame Web to not be ridiculed.<\/p>\n A Sony Spider-Man spin-off starring three powerless 20-something girls running around New York City without<\/em> Spider-Man? It was doomed from the start.<\/p>\n But, who knows, perhaps in 20 years Madame Web will go down as a cult classic, just as Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer before it. Perhaps it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n Either way, Madame Web managed to return us to a time when we all weren\u2019t so spoiled by our superheroes \u2013 a time when we didn\u2019t have<\/em> to take everything so seriously. And that\u2019s a win. A small win \u2013 but it\u2019s a win.<\/p>\n![\"Dakota](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/08\/Madame-Web-4cb22c4.png?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"Madame")
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