5-sentence review of ‘Black Widow’

1. If you saw the excellent FX series “The Americans,” “Black Widow” is going to be a disappointment for you, because Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) entire backstory is basically the plot of that show.

2. At some point during the film, I stopped to think, “How many scenes of people fist-fighting while skidding atop falling debris can a person see in a movie-watching lifetime before it becomes a dull green screen trope?”

3. Credit to David Harbor as the Red Guardian, Russia’s dad bod Captain America, who provides the bulk of the film’s humor.

4. Florence Pugh is unimpressive as Yelena Belova, Natasha’s sort-off little sister and de facto replacement in the franchise moving forward and the Taskmaster “surprise” is not enough to make up for the fact that the character is basically a Stormtropper with better aim.

5. This movie made me wonder, not for the first time, if Johansson is a good actress, as we are often told, or if is just genetically gifted enough to be so beautiful she’s in a lot of movies, which is no fault of her, but makes for some dull watching.