Madame Web Review: 1 Up & 9 Downs
4. All The TERRIBLE Dialogue
It's a common joke to say that poorly scripted modern films feel like they were written by ChatGPT, but Madame Web's screenplay is such a generic mishmash of superhero movie tropes and uncanny, scarcely human-sounding dialogue that it absolutely feels true in this case.
While the filmmakers sensibly cut that infamously terrible exposition line from the trailers - "Ezekiel Sims. He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died" - the final cut is still chock full with dreadful, snooze-inducing chit-chat.
This is a movie positively awash in flavourless exposition, but even the attempts at pithy, witty, MCU-style banter between the focal heroes mostly end up falling flat.
That so much of the dialogue was clearly added in post-production doesn't seem to have helped it much, either.
Though the risible lines will occasionally rouse a smirk, the dialogue is mostly just sawdust-dry.