Madame Web: Hopelessly tangled

Madame Web (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.16.24

This is the worst — and wholly failed — attempt at a high-profile superhero movie I’ve ever had the displeasure of enduring.

 

Cassie (Dakota Johnson, rear) and her three new companions — from left, Mattie
(Celeste O'Connor), Anya (Isabela Merced) and Julia (Sydney Sweeney) — are
terrified to discover they're being pursued by a powerful, costumed assassin who can
scuttle along ceilings.

I cannot imagine what prompted Sony/Marvel to green-light this pathetic excuse for a script by five credited hands: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, Kerem Sanga and director S.J. Clarkson. Nothing — not the premise, plot, characters or dialogue — works, or feels even remotely like how real-world people would behave or talk.

This filmmaking team clearly wished to create a franchise that would give teenage girl heroes an entry into Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and that’s a noble goal.

 

To have squandered that opportunity so egregiously, however, is deplorable.

 

Why these writers chose to re-invent such an obscure Marvel Comics character also is bewildering.

 

Cassandra Webb — aka Madame Webb — has occasionally scuttled around the fringes of Spider-Man comics since her debut back in November 1980. She’s a “precognitive clairvoyant” who gets unexpected flashes of near-future events, and therefore is able to change them, ideally for better outcomes.

 

But this numb-nuts script by Clarkson et al ignores most of that, instead setting this story’s events in an alternate universe that apparently lacks Spider-Man and all the other familiar Marvel superheroes.

 

Instead, a brief prologue introduces the very pregnant Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé), as she searches the Peruvian jungle for a rare spider, whose venom is reputed to have powerful healing and enhancement properties. She’s accompanied by bodyguard Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who may as well have the phrase “actually a murderous opportunist” tattooed on his forehead.

 

Rahim has done better work in other films, but Clarkson clearly couldn’t inspire him here.

 

Sure enough, Sims shows his true colors once Constance finds one of the spiders; she’s mortally wounded in the subsequent scuffle. Sims gets away, while Constance is scooped up by — I’m not making this up — a hitherto-only-rumored tribe of web-garbed individuals with superhuman strength and agility, courtesy of the multitude of those same spiders with whom they’re sympatico. 

 

These guys carry her off to an underground grotto, and successfully deliver her baby daughter; alas — despite a helpful bite by one of the spiders — Constance dies.

 

Honestly, it’s hard not to laugh. The webby costumes are just silly, and their tree- and vine-hopping swiftness is ridiculously overstated.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Bittersweet lament

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG, for occasional crude language and mild profanity, and a bit of fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.3.14

James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” originally appeared in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and subsequently went on to become one of the most frequently anthologized American short stories. It subsequently begat a charming 1947 Danny Kaye film, a 1960 stage adaptation — as part of the revue A Thurber Carnival — and a woefully underappreciated 1969-70 TV sitcom, My World and Welcome to It, that barely scraped along for a single season (and still hasn’t been released on home video, drat the luck!).

Walter (Ben Stiller), desperate to make an impression on Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), imagines
all sorts of adventurous meet-cute moments, as with this fantasy of appearing before her
as a suave and rugged Arctic explorer

Now, rather unexpectedly, Thurber’s whimsical day in the life of a mild-mannered nebbish has become a poignant lament on the demise of print journalism. From the wild ’n’ crazy Ben Stiller, no less. Who could have imagined?

Not I; that’s for certain.

Initially, though, Stiller’s film — he directed and co-scripted (with Steve Conrad), in addition to starring in the title role — lives down to my worst expectations. The opening half-hour slides clumsily into slapstick nonsense as we meet Walter, the “Negative Assets Manager” at Life Magazine. That droll job title actually refers to Walter’s selection and careful handling of the dynamic photographs that have characterized the publication.

He toils quietly in the Time Life Building’s sub-sub basement, helped only by a single assistant, Hernando (a disarmingly dry Adrian Martinez), while fantasizing about all the astonishingly brave and bold moments that have been captured on the images he has handled. Walter also imagines working up the courage to approach co-worker Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig), invariably concocting a scenario that involves saving her life, or otherwise impressing her greatly.

When back on earth, he can barely muster a morning greeting ... despite the fact, as we can tell, that she’s clearly interested.

Although set in the modern day, Stiller and Conrad have re-invented Life’s timeline in order to suit their purpose: to follow Walter on what becomes the worst day of his life, as the magazine’s corporate owners announce the termination of its print edition. Just as life has passed Walter by, life now is about to pass Life by.

Even his job has been rendered superfluous, since the advent of digital photography has wholly transformed the art and craft of photojournalism. But not for one lone hold-out: the dynamic Sean O’Connell (a cameo by Sean Penn), an old-school camera jockey who’ll still roar toward the heart of an exploding volcano, snapping pictures while standing on the wings of a biplane.

But on the boring ground, the magazine’s conversion to dot-com oblivion is being overseen by the new Managing Director in Charge of The Transition: the consummately arrogant, presumptuously inconsiderate and relentlessly intimidating Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott). Sensing a victim who won’t fight back, the bullying Hendricks wastes no opportunity to belittle Walter ... who simply makes matters worse with his tendency to drift into occasional fantasy fugues.

Friends with Kids: The best-laid plans...

Friends with Kids (2011) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang


Most adult friendships face two crisis points.

Couples signing on for the long term — whether via the bond of marriage, or a less formal commitment — inevitably lose their single friends. All concerned may try to avoid this outcome, but the dynamic invariably fractures. The singletons don’t want to be third wheels; they’re also likely to feel lonely in the face of such love.

When longtime best friends Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt)
decide to have a baby together, they initially get hung up over how to handle
"the act" itself; after all, they're friends, not lovers. Finally, Julie hits the
perfect solution: "Let's just pretend that we're really into each other," she
suggests. Ah, but is it only pretense?

Then, too, I’ve always suspected that our (former) single friends, back in the day, decided that we just weren’t fun any more.

Okay, so couples make new friends, generally with other couples. The second rift occurs if all your new friends start having children ... but you choose not to take that path. Getting together —enjoying everybody’s company during a raucous night out — becomes impossible, in great part because new parents just can’t do that.

Fine, you think, then why not visit them at home? And yet — somehow — even that never seems to happen.

My suspicion, this time, is that the new parents now regard their childless friends with grim disapproval and jealousy, because they’re not suffering enough.

This is a rich dynamic, and one that writer/director Jennifer Westfeldt mines to excellent comic effect, in Friends with Kids. But while her first few acts are funny, snarky and hilariously vulgar — in the way we now must accept, post-Judd Apatow and Bridesmaids — Westfeldt’s film is far from frivolous. The core premise here comes with an unpleasant catch, and she doesn’t shy away from its consequences.

Although primarily an actress, Westfeldt pops up every so often with perceptive, sharp-edged scripts; she enjoys exploring relationships that involve unusual twists, and she remains well remembered for writing and starring in 2001’s charming Kissing Jessica Stein. Her sophomore writing effort, 2006’s Ira & Abby, wasn’t as successful; Friends with Kids — her third script, and her directorial debut — deserves to do much better.

Although Westfeldt always writes herself the starring role, she’s savvy enough to involve talented colleagues, each of whom is granted an equally rich character. Friends with Kids is no different in that respect, and Westfeldt is doubly lucky to have snagged Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Chris O’Dowd, all still riding high on the buzz of last year’s Bridesmaids.

Thirtysomething Manhantanites Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) have been best friends for years: each squarely in the other’s corner, come what may. Jason seems content to sail through a series of short-term relationships with well-endowed hotties; Julie hasn’t been able to make things click in the romance department. Despite their devoted bond, they’ve never considered dating each other, perhaps sensing that such an act might destroy their friendship.

Although not really a “couple” themselves, Julie and Jason are part of a convivial sextet that includes the married Ben and Missy (Jon Hamm and Wiig), and the equally hitched Alex and Leslie (O’Dowd and Rudolph). Outings are lively, profane and cheerfully vulgar: good friends having great times together.