There are few things more enjoyable than watching Dakota Johnson take the piss out of one of her movies. It's even better when it's not simply done in the promo tour but within the flick itself. Some might find it disrespectful, but such are the privileges of our nepo baby extraordinaire. She's got enough bad reviews to satisfy those who dislike her approach and even some Razzie nominations to go with them. However, I'd argue Johnson's bizarre deliveries, the projections of disdain for bad scripts, might be a kind of secret weapon of hers. There comes a point where one starts to feel a kinship with the actress or even a sense that she's fixing rotten characterizations by simply not taking them too seriously…
The first Fifty Shades of Grey movie is the primary example to prove the merit of Johnson's artful ironies. Subsequent efforts would snuff out anything interesting in the original project, jettisoning Sam Taylor-Johnson and her crew while also acquiescing to the author's demands. But in that movie, Dakota Johnson delivers a performance of unusual shrewdness, taking moments that read as earnest on paper and embodying them with a humorous twist. At times, Anastasia Steele appears on the verge of laughing at her own awkward sayings, and she's always ready to de-escalate the melodrama. She feels like a proverbial needle popping an overinflated - mayhap oversexed - balloon.
Is it sabotage, or is it genius? It depends on the scene, but for most of that failed provocation's runtime, Johnson is a box full of surprises, most of them good. As said before, the actress lost that spark in the sequels, playing it all straight and sincere to the viewer's significant loss. Thankfully, for fans of Johnson's thrilling half-ass-ery, she's at it again in Madame Web, the latest Sony attempt to capture that MCU spark. As always, they have failed, and the internet was quick to turn the flop into a meme factory cum punching bag. Now, the movie's no good – cutting, color grading, and sound are outrageously misconceived – but it's also far from a Morbius-level catastrophe.
Part of it stems from a taste for Y2K nostalgia, how its flaws almost work like throwbacks to another, very different time in Hollywood's embrace of superhero cinema. But Dakota Johnson also deserves some praise. When faced with the early stages of her character's prescience, she looks giddy to undercut the wacky concept with those awkward tics of hers. And yet, when the narrative demands a more grounded approach, she manages to negotiate that variation with more skill than most are giving her credit. While Johnson has been dismissive of the picture throughout its press tour, I don't think Madame Web deserves all that scorn.
Fair is fair, it's a bad picture. However, it could be so much worse. We all know it could. At least I had fun with it, which isn't something I'll say about most recent comic book movies. Thank heaven for Johnson's unhinged energy.
Madame Web is available to rent and purchase on the major platforms.