The latest film from Damien Chazelle is a misguided history lesson starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt that is so over the top that it hits rock bottom.
Nellie LaRoy is a young woman with big dreams of making it in Hollywood. She'll do anything to get there, even crash a swinging party where she might even meet Jack Conrad , the silent-movie era's biggest star who seems to be not-so-happily-married to Ina . Nellie befriends another dreamer and schemer, Manny Torres who yearns to work behind the scenes in Hollywood as a power broker.
But there are serious issues lurking in the dark corners, away from the party lights. Set at a time when Hollywood was on the cusp of moving from silent to sound, there's a latent desperation in the air, especially with characters like Jack who could see their careers slip away if they can't make the transition.
There are some powerful moments here and, if Chazelle could have found a way to plumb these emotions more effectively,"Babylon" would pack a much bigger punch. As it is, everyone feels like a one-dimensional cartoon character in a world where they lurch from one drug-and-alcohol outrage to the next. Want to see an underground circus-freak performer eat a rat? A woman urinating on a lover? A guy get his head stuck in a toilet? We got you.
Then Chazelle goes avant-garde at the end with a tribute to cinema that seems stylistically at odds with the rest of the film and feels like an anvil dropped on the audience's head. Apparently, he really does love Hollywood and its sordid history but, if the previous three hours had been deeper and more modulated, he wouldn't have needed to hammer it home right before the credits roll.cary.darling@houstonchronicle.
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