Review: Cassie is a paramedic, who saves lives for a living. But having been raised in a foster home, the idea of a happy family is alien to her. She blames her dead mother for being too adventurous, while being heavily pregnant with her and venturing into the Peruvian Amazon for research on a magical spider venom that has healing powers. Cut to when she grows up, Cassie has a near death experience that changes her life forever. She discovers the ability to see the immediate future. Now, as every friendly neighbourhood superhero, Cassie too is committed to using her newfound power positively. But just as she is still discovering it, she finds herself in the midst of a dangerous mission to save three young girls from a formidable foe, who is out to kill them.
It’s a straightforward story that deals with the origin and induction of actress Dakota Johnson as a Marvel superhero, ‘Madame Webb’ into Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU). Director S. J. Clarkson achieves this purpose effortlessly by ensuring that the story (by Kerem Sanga, Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless) is executed with minimal complexity and that’s a plus. But this superhero suspense thriller is never able to lift itself beyond that. It serves more like a teaser to familiarise us with Madame Webb’s superpowers, as she spends a lot of screen time figuring out what the hell is happening with her. While doing so too, the screenplay never gives its character any unbridled power to truly wow its audience. This means we have to contend with the slow build up of whatever little suspense there is to hold on to and some cat-and-mouse chase scenes. The action ranges from satisfactory to underwhelming, again never going beyond the usual tropes. There is an overdose of Pepsi Cola advertising woven cleverly into even the most crucial scene in the climax.
Dakota Johnson does well as the clueless superwoman, but the writing is just too lazy to extract much out of her. Still, this twinkling blue-eyed brunette is very easy to root for. The three young girls Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced, who play the future superwomen Julia Cornwall, Mattie Franklin and Anya Corazon depict a range of cliches. What’s different is that for once, the black girl here is the rich spoiled brat while the two white girls are less privileged. While their regular avatars are just fine, when sporting superhero costumes, they end up looking like spoofy fancy dressed caricatures. Tahar Rahim as the greedy and power-hungry Ezekiel Sims gets absolutely no backstory to justify his past nor do we get any explanation of what exactly he does for a living. All we know is that he is a filthy rich paranoid prick, but naive enough to think that setting up a multiple screen surveillance system at his fancy home, with just one lady virtually snooping around 24/7, is going to solve all his problems. The whole attempt to infuse some family feel into the story with Cassie’s colleague O’Neil (Mike Epps) and his pregnant sister-in-law Mary Parker (Emma Roberts) is so half-hearted.
In conclusion, ‘Madame Web’ falls short of making a significant impact within the superhero genre, serving more as a tepid introduction than a compelling addition to an already saturated market.