Madame Web review: A baby shower for the unborn Peter Parker ranks among the stupidest moves in comic book film history

In cinemas; Cert 12A

Isabela Merced, Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney and Celeste O’Connor in a frantic search for credibility in ‘Madame Web’

Chris Wasser

They’ll be laughing at this one for decades. Awkward, sloppy, staggeringly incoherent, there is little evidence to suggest that anyone involved in Madame Web knew what they were doing. The catastrophe extends all the way to the top of the queue.

Dakota Johnson, struggling to hide her disinterest from the outset, takes an inherently awful screenplay and somehow makes it worse. Sydney Sweeney wears the look of a performer who forgot to learn her lines. Meanwhile, Tahar Rahim, the charisma-free villain of this cack-handed superhero tale, is forced to compete with some hideous post-production interference. The screen is fine; the projector isn’t broken, and the speakers are correctly fixed – it’s just bad overdubbing. Like, really, really bad. Sony did not arrange an advance press show for critics – I can see why.