Is it time for Madonna to abdicate as a film director?

Madonna's hopes of being taken seriously as a film director took a dive yesterday when her second film W.E. - it stands for Wallis and Edward – was met with giggles from the Venice Film Festival audience and horrible early reviews from the critics.

Her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, released three years ago, was called incoherent and fatuous among other things. This one, which casts the seemiongly unfortunate English actors Andrea Riseborough and James D'Arcy as as Wallis and Edward VIII, is no less a stinker.

Xan Brooks in the Guardian calls it a "jaw dropping" take on the abdication crisis. "What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is ... W.E. gives us slo-mo and jump cuts and a crawling crane shot up a tree in Balmoral, but they are all just tricks without a purpose.

"For her big directoral flourish, Madonna has Wallis bound on stage to dance with a Masai tribesman while Pretty Vacant blares on the soundtrack. But why? What point is she making?"

Kate Muir in the Times writes: "As the camera drools over Schiaparelli dresses and Cartier bracelets, there is the sense that one material girl is making a hagiography of another. By intercutting newsreel, fantasies and careful re-creations of the 1930s milieu surrounding the king, Madonna manages to create scenes which - perhaps to her surprise - had 'em rolling in the aisles at Venice."

Kyle Buchanan in New York magazine makes the point that when the powerful Weinstein company scheduled a Venice premiere and December opening for W.E. it was assumed it might have some "awards cachet". Now it seems its best hope will be at the Razzies, the "golden raspberry" awards for Hollywood's worst films of the year.

Under the headline 'Royal disaster', Oliver Lyttelton blogs for The Playlist that it's clear Madonna identifies with Wallis, and in particular her hounding by the press. Sadly, as a filmmaker she shows no capacity for writing or directing.

So far, only Baz Bamigboye of the Daily Mail believes Madonna shouldn't abdicate the director's throne. A lot of people will loathe the film, he argues, simply because it's been made by Madonna. "But if they were to watch it with no knowledge of who directed, they would be pleasantly surprised. They might even find much of it enjoyable."

But then Baz is billed as "the friend of the stars". ·