I'm here to defend this.
First: "Black Widow as something crazy and a bit funnier than we expect it to be." is not Blankman. It is not Slapstick. It isn't even Deadpool. Please don't let clickbait titles cause you to misread the director's statements as though he wants to do 21 Jump Street with Natasha, or that he must be just goofing off.
Second: The Bourne-style Black Widow franchise has already been swallowed up by The Winter Soldier. Doing a Black Widow with the same inspirations as TWS is just as uninteresting and redundant and pointless as a Hercules movie with the same inspirations as Thor films. This is why he points out in various ways "It'd really have to be its own standalone and its own style and its own story." Otherwise, you just have Atomic Blonde, who is already the ideal Bourne-lite femme fatale, but just not interesting enough to the vast majority of the public to care.
Third: So to do a Black Widow movie that deserves to stand on its own based on the movie itself, it needs it's own fresh new vector of engagement that isn't already being done in another franchise in the MCU. To that end something like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Kingsman, Knight and Day, something "crazy and a bit funnier" is a really good idea, and ironically, much more likely to be taken seriously than something somber and brutal like Atomic Blonde.
Taika basically proposed taking Black Widow in the crazy funny relevant Kingsman direction for a solo rather than the somber expected relevant to the early-2010s Bourne/New Bond direction.
For me, having Natasha in the midst of a zany film, playing the dead serious "Harry" role ala Kingsman while she protects the hapless male lead (Rick Jones, anyone?) as they get into absolutely insane hijinks against a parade of Connery Bond-inspired villains culled from the C-list of Marvel comics, that'd be so much fun. That'd make the movie worth watching.
