Madame Web has no energy and no original ideas

The first superhero movie of 2024 suffers from a lack of original ideas and an unrelenting lack of energy from the cast, writes Leigh Paatsch.

Madame Web (M)

Director: S.J. Clarkson (feature debut)

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Adam Scott.

Rating: *

Itsy, bitsy and down the water spout

Welcome to the first superhero movie of 2024, a stinker so pungent that a peg should be included with every ticket.

Madame Web hails from that administratively foggy corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where Marvel permits another studio to manufacture Spider-Man and Spidey-adjacent product for mass consumption.

Most of the stuff made with Spider-Man upfront has been very good. The rest (such as Venom and Morbius) has been very average. Madame Web, however, is truly terrible.

It is the year 2003. Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a New York paramedic who has a near-death experience that leaves her with a new superpower to learn and master.

Cassie can now see into the future. Sometimes she only has a 30-seconds-or-so sneak preview of a calamity about to happen. Other times, her window to impending woe can stretch out past five minutes.

Cassie’s new talent may have something to do with the death of her mother some three decades earlier in the Amazon. Cassie’s mum had just discovered a species of spider that could heal a hurting human body in a flash. Then someone shot her and took off with the magic spider.

The fella who killed Cassie’s ma goes by the name of Ezekiel Sims (an awful Tahar Rahim), and he’s been doing nothing else in the time since but huffing away on that magic spider’s super-venom.

Isabela Merced, Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney and Celeste O’Connor in Madame Web.

Though Ezekiel is blessed with a suite of powers not unlike those of the yet-to-be-born Spider-Man (spoiler alert: Cassie’s best friend is Spidey-Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben), he believes he is cursed to die one day at the hands of three young women in slinky Spidey-costumes.

Ezekiel wants the trio dead now, even though they’re just typical, harmlessly self-centred teenagers with names like Anya (Isabela Merced from Dora the Explorer), Julia (Sydney Sweeney of Anyone But You fame) and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor).

Meanwhile, Cassie senses she must hide and protect these three girls from Ezekiel so they can one day realise their chosen destiny (and perhaps headline a series of sequels into the bargain).

While the movie is completely without an original idea throughout, the debacle is multiplied by an unrelenting lack of energy or enthusiasm displayed by those on screen.

Up and down the cast list, everyone underplays their roles with a casual inertia that eventually has you wondering if someone has slipped something in their drinks. It is almost impossible to recall a major motion picture with such minor energy levels.

The maths of this feeble filmmaking formula are easily calculated by viewers: the people who made the movie clearly don’t care, so why should the audience?

Madame Web is in cinemas now

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE (M)

Rating: **

General release

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita Marley in Bob Marley: One Love.

Anyone expecting a jukebox biopic of Bob Marley that might feasibly be on par with the likes of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody or Elton John’s Rocketman are bound to be disappointed by what they encounter here. Sure, a classic cut from the late reggae legend can be heard every few minutes, and it is always a pleasure to plug in to the uplifting vibe that defined the best of Marley’s music. However, it is what transpires when the soundtrack switches off that is the problem here.

Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch and director Reinaldo Marcus Green on set.

Strangely, as a movie, One Love does quite a convincing job conveying what it must have been like to be around Bob Marley in his prime as a performer in the 1970s. However, One Love never once feels as if it is about Bob Marley the man. He appears fully formed at the start of the movie as a global superstar, and his character rarely progresses beyond that single, obvious trait. While newcomer Kingsley Ben-Adir does a fine job mirroring the immense charisma of Marley both on and off the stage, a sketchy screenplay and some inelegant dialogue often cancels out his best work.

FALLEN LEAVES (M)

Rating: ****

Selected cinemas

Alma Poysti and Jussi Vatanen in Fallen Leaves. Picture: Malla Hukkanen

You’ve never seen a romantic comedy as down-and-out and deliriously deadpan as this – in recent times at least. It is also unlikely you’ve seen one as honestly touching as this. The setting is Finland’s capital Helsinki, where love just might be a longshot chance for a pair of lonely hearts doing it tough in their respective lives. Ansa (Alma Poysti) has just been given the boot from her supermarket job for taking home expired merchandise. Now she sits at home contemplating her own expiry date. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is also about to hit the unemployment lines. His copious drinking around the clock all but guarantees his sacking soon.

Alma Poysti and Nuppu Koivu in Fallen Leaves. Picture: Malla Hukkanen

A chance meeting between this soft-spoken pair at a karaoke bar triggers the finely-woven pattern of will-they-or-won’t-they encounters that will fill the rest of the movie. A phone number is misplaced. A lost dog is found. Timings are out of sync. Chance meetings are missed by a matter of minutes. And yet this quietly funny and endearingly gruff movie keeps you hoping our two would-be lovers will be together by the time the final credits roll. Wonderful stuff.