Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic in New York City.  Haunted by the fact that her mother died while giving birth to her while looking for a special spider in Peru (and I cannot believe that I just wrote that), Cassie struggles with showing her emotions and opening up to people.  In fact, her only friend appears to be her fellow paramedic, Ben Parker (Adam Scott).  Ben’s sister-in-law is pregnant and Cassie tells him, “You’ll be a great uncle, Ben.”

After a near-death experience, Cassie discovers that she has the ability to see into the future.  She also discovers that a strange man named Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) wants to kill three teenage girls, Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Julia (Sydney Sweeney).  Cassie does what anyone would do.  She kidnaps the three girls to keep them safe and then hops on a plane to Peru to find out how Ezekiel is connected to her mother’s death.

Madame Web is the latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.  Because Sony has the rights to Spider-Man, all of the MCU films featuring Spider-Man have been co-productions with Columbia Pictures and have been distributed by Sony.  With Spider-Man emerging as one of the few characters to remain a strong box office draw for Marvel, Columbia has produced a series of Spider-Man-adjacent films that feature characters who have appeared in Spider-Man-related media.  While Marvel and Disney have Tom Holland swinging his way through New York, Sony has to settle for Adam Scott and Dakota Johnson in an ambulance.

I always assume that the folks at Marvel and Disney probably groan a little whenever they hear that a new Sony film is coming out.  The MCU Spider-Man films have been consistently strong, with all three of them proving popular with both audiences and critics.  The Sony Spider-Man films, on the other hand, often seem like throwbacks to the bad old days of the early aughts, when most comic book films were still cheap and kind of embarrassing.  Madame Web doesn’t do much to change this perception.  In fact, the film is even set in 2003, complete with a Blockbuster Video store prominently featured in one scene, Britney Spears’s Toxic playing in a roadside diner, and a totally random reference to American Idol.  (What’s funny is that the jokey reference to American Idol would really only work if the show were no longer on the air but actually, it’s still airing on CBS.  No one ever seems to notice anymore but it’s still there.  If the movie really had any guts, it would have had Dakota Johnson says that she was going home to watch Paradise Hotel.)

Slow-paced and featuring some of the most awkward line readings this side of a community theater production of Bus Stop, Madame Web is not a particularly engaging film.  After a truly abysmal prologue set in Peru, the film spends about half-an-hour giving us a tour of Cassie’s not particularly interesting life as a tough New York paramedic before finally getting started on the main story.  And even then, the film leaves the viewer feeling cheated because none of three girls — who we are told are all destined to become super heroes — actually become super powered over the course of the film.  The film basically says, “They’re all going to be Spiderwoman …. BUT NOT TODAY!”   The problem with that approach is that it’s hard not to feel that the only interesting thing about the three girls is that they’re eventually going to have super powers.  Without the powers, they’re just kind of boring.  Cassie is the only one who has a super power but being able to see three minutes into the future isn’t that much of a power.  Dakota Johnson and the rest of the cast all seem to be bored out of their minds and who can blame them?

The main problem with Madame Web is that it’s just not much fun.  The best super hero films are fun to watch.  That goes for the Marvel films, the DC films, and even the Sony films.  (Admit it, the first Venom was kind of fun.)  Even with The Dark Knight films, Christopher Nolan understood that the villains had to be flamboyant to make up for Christian Bale’s rather dour Batman.  In this film, we’re never quite sure what Ezekiel wants or even who he is.  He’s just a random evil guy and not a particularly memorable one.  Madame Web does make some attempts at humor but the sitcom-style jokes are negated by Dakota Johnson’s flat delivery.  (Oddly enough, sitcom veteran Adam Scott is stuck playing a serious character.)  Overall, there’s an overwhelming blandness to Madame Web.  It doesn’t engage,.  It doesn’t thrill.  It doesn’t make you cheer or even jeer.  It’s just kind of there.

The film sets up a sequel but, judging from how the film did at the box office and how not even the film’s cast has pretended to be happy with how the film turned out, I’d expect to see Morbius 2 before another installment of Madame Web.