Babylon is perhaps the WORST, most excruciating movie I’ve ever seen.). I just finished endured..it online. I had wanted to go see it since I love period movies about movies…until I read the reviews. Some critics went beyond its considerable bilge and praised it for artistic or creative reasons. After watching it and reading a ton of reviews, I will say this:
1)This wasn’t just a film about excess it was so bloated its three hours should have been trimmed to two hours…OR LESS.
2)Sorry. I can’t praise its musical score by Justin Hurwitz. It is irrelevant to music produced during that period.
3)Most of its actors don’t talk like the people did in that era. Any minute I expected them to say “Awesome, dude! Keyuwl! Way to go!”
4)The cast was good (and wasted) but Brad Pitt and newcomer Mexican actor Diego Calva were the standouts, especially Pitt.
5)The praised final minutes showing a fast-paced edited montage about Hollywood and movies failed to bring me in.
Watching Babylon was more than three ours of my life utterly wasted. I’d rather have my toenails, fingernails and belly button pulled out and be forced to listen to “It’s a Small World” and “Baby Shark” for 10 hours than watch it again.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.