Madame Web - Might be Better Off as TV Pilot but Despite its Shortcomings Still Quite Enjoyable

It had been few months since my wife and I saw a superhero movie in the theater. So when the film was released this week, both of us decided to see it in the weekend when we have the opportunity. All right then, I'll dive into it.

Brief Story Line

Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson - Bad Times at the El Royale, How to be Single etc) was a paramedic in Manhattan working with her partner Ben (Adam Scott - Little Evil, Severance TV series etc).  After an incident during her work, Cassie started to have visions of future which totally confused her. When she saw glimpses of a mysterious person later revealed to be Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim - The Mauritanian, The Serpent etc) trying to kill three teenagers, Cassie decided to save them.

The three girls that consisted of the awkward Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney - The Voyeurs, Night Teeth etc), the rich girl with attitude Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor - Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Inbetween etc) and the intelligent Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced - Migration, Dora and the Lost City of Gold etc) were obviously suspicious of Cassie at first. And their young age did not exactly help with Cassie's well intention either.

So how would the story conclude? And why did Cassie had such ability? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

My wife and I did not have any major expectations when we saw this movie, although I personally have read or heard a bit about some people's thoughts of it. So we just went with the flow and felt it was quite OK. In fact when Cassie started to show glimpses of her new power, we felt quite excited and were getting curious of how it would progress. And the way the psychic ability was shown was easily understood & not very complicated, so we did not have to scratch our heads to have better understanding.

Anyway when the three girls were introduced, the story became even lighter than before as they were shown to be like any normal teenagers with their behavior. It was quite fun looking at them since they had completely different characteristics. As the story continued, the movie felt more for fun rather than thrilling & suspenseful. I thought Cassandra Webb's power was not too strong yet which was understandable since she was still developing it, but it did make the fight against the villain a bit one sided. Hence the finale was not satisfying enough as it was a bit too easy (my wife felt it a major let down).

For a superhero movie, this one was lacking really proper action. Perhaps because Cassandra's ability was not in doing heavy action but more towards seeing the future. I personally have no problem in seeing her develop the power gradually in order to have enough strength to fight the major villain. Which is why I thought this would be more proper if it was made into TV series instead of movie where she fight smaller villains while adding more and more power as the story continued. It's probably more convincing that way rather than trying to fit everything into an almost 2 hours movie. And honestly the movie also had a strong vibe of TV pilot as the action was not extravagant/spectacular and the ending certainly had that kind of feeling. Possibly because it was directed by S. J. Clarkson in her feature film directorial debut where her past experience was directing episodes in TV series like Doctors, Anatomy of a Scandal, Heroes and so on. 

Now in term of cast, I thought they did OK. The characters were obviously not written into the very deep type but my wife and I did not mind them. Aside from those names I mentioned above, there were also additional characters like Ben's sister Mary (Emma Roberts - Holidate, Billionaire Boys Club etc), the hacker working for Ezekiel (Zosia Mamet - The Flight Attendant  TV series etc), Cassie's mom Constance (Kerry Bishe - Halt and Catch Fire TV series etc) and few others. One thing that I thought would have made the film more complete would be the revealing of information related to Mary. It could have been added in the end credit scene,  but surprisingly there was none at all.

After seeing the movie, I thought in general it was not as disappointing as what everybody have pointed out. I read that critics and audiences were really trashing the film, branding it an embarassing mess and so on, but personally I was still able to enjoy it. Sure it did not have proper characters development or amazing action sequence and the relevance to Spider-man was too subtle that we might not realize it if we did not notice the names involved. However I did not think it justified being categorized so terrible. Oh, I found out that the story had been re-written few times which was unfortunate as the original plot sounded darker & better. Sadly it was already done and it might not be good news for Sony's Spider-man Universe with only Venom the only villain films doing well.

Overall it was a movie that could be enjoyed if you disregard what critics and other people are saying. If you are very critical and wanting to save some movie allowance, then you could certainly wait till it's available via online streaming. My wife and I felt that the sound effects were really good, despite they did not release the Dolby Atmos version. So we were pretty satisfied having seen this in the cinema. Obviously we would have been more entertained if the original story was told and it had more spectacular actions.

 Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars