“Babylon” Movie Review

Someone on Twitter summed up this movie by saying “If you’re gonna make a movie, make a fucking movie. And Babylon is a fucking movie.” To be honest, I’m disappointed and ashamed I didn’t come up with something that clever myself.

If I had to describe this movie in one word: chaotic. Sometimes I think that was to the movie’s benefit and sometimes I think to its detriment. It’s been about 2 hours since I got out of the film as of this moment (12/27/2022 8:07 PM), and still don’t know where I land. Did I like it? did I hate it? Was it mid? These are the questions that haunted me on my 15-minute drive home and haunt me now as I sip Christmas Cheer Wine on my couch.

I definitely respect the crazy shit that happened every 30 seconds. I certainly didn’t hate the plethora of titties and ass that flooded the big screen for a satisfying amount of time (not a pervert). However, I still don’t understand the point of the narrative. The movie never felt like it was building to anything important. I guess we saw several character’s arcs progress and eventually come to an end, but… okay? I’m not 100% sure who out of Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva was supposed to be the main focus.

Margot was basically just a crazy bitch the whole time, really didn’t give a fuck about her. Brad Pitt was basically just there to be handsome I think, could’ve been played by any hollywood-type guy. Diego Calva was the most interesting guy to me, but his story just really didn’t make sense. Shit just kept happening to him, and he was accelerating through Hollywood at an insane pace. At first it seemed like everyone was basically being blatantly racist towards him, and then BOOM he’s a Hollywood executive? Don’t get me wrong, it seemed like a cool-ass life, but I think that leads me to my biggest issue in the film.

While I am a huge simp for chaos and situational comedy, nothing just felt real in this movie. The scene in the desert where it seems like 45 movies are being shot at once (?) and it’s just people acting insane and directing nonsense just confused me. I obviously wasn’t alive in the 20s, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how shit went down. Obviously, it’s a fucking movie and I’m not a loser who needs everything to be hyper-realistic, but nobody felt real and there were no consequences to ANYTHING. Dudes were overdosing or dying on set CONSTANTLY and I get that was played for comedy, but didn’t land for me. Now I feel like one of those Netflix rioters protesting Dave Chapelle for being fucking hilarious.

In my mind, films like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Nice Guys accomplished the situational chaos/comedy a little better. Those movies felt like they had real characters and a real narrative that was progressing naturally. At the end of the day, this was just a bunch of random Hollywood shit, with nudity thrown in all over the place to keep movie perverts (again, not me) locked in. I think I have finally figured that out as I am typing up this world-class review on my Dell computer. I think wannabe artsy people and horny 18-year olds will like this movie more than me. Shoutout Toby Maguire.

Final Rating: 2.5/5 (Mid)