How bad is Madame Web? 

According to Rotten Tomatoes critiques, it's one of the worst superhero movies ever made. 

And while I won't disagree with them on that premise, I've definitely seen worse.

Here's the thing... With Sony not lifting the embargo on movie reviews until the day before release day, they were already sort of telling us that this was going to be a bad movie.

When the critical reviews slaughtered this movie for what it is – a bad movie – I already knew I was in for a wild ride.

In fact, the only reason I even spent money and time going to the movies to watch this is because I want to take Movie Club seriously.

I want to try to watch as many of the latest releases as possible so that I can save you time and money from making the trip to the movies.

Madame Web is bad for a variety of reasons... The main one being the sloppy writing.

I don't understand who hires these writers nowadays to write movie scripts. This article, which I'm literally writing on Zirkels without having any sort of backup in Notion, has been thought through better than this film's script.

Dakota Johnson could have been a great Madame Web, in my opinion. She's a cool actress, but the decisions she makes throughout this movie are so silly that she can't possibly let her art shine.

The villain is almost non-existent. I mean, there's a bad guy of course. But... He's just not that good at being bad. And by now, how can Sony not know that what makes or breaks superhero flicks is the quality of the villain?

There's also a case to be made about this not even being a superhero film at all. There's very little action, and what you've seen from the spider-women in the trailer is about as much superhero costumes you're going to see in the movie.

The above wouldn't even be that big of a deal for me if the movie would at least make sense. But good lord... It's just hard to save.

Now... I do have something positive to say...

When you go into a movie thinking you're going to see something really bad, and you come out of it seeing something not as awful but still pretty bad... You end up leaving the movie theater a bit happier than anticipated?

But seriously, save your money. In fact, send a message to studios asking them to stop making these things. This isn't just bad for Sony, it's bad for cinema. This hurts all superhero movies. The bar needs to be raised. Not everything should be allowed.

There are moments here and there in this film that had a certain degree of "okay, I'm being entertained while I eat popcorn". Because you definitely need popcorn to save you here. But... It doesn't save the movie from being rotten, in my opinion.

I've seen worse, and I've left the theater before being angry at movies, which didn't happen here because my expectations were at an all-time low.

Score: 4/10 🪰*

* 🪰 Rotten, didn't like it 🍿 Fun, give it a watch 🍅 Fresh, must watch!