Babylon A.D.: Unrelenting Shittiness
Wherein I review a bad, bad movie.
Babylon A.D. is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of shitty films. It is a film that is vigorous about being shitty – like, it fucking spent years training to win the Shitty Film Olympics.
Unrelenting Shittiness.
The only reason Maynard and I went to see this is because we’d seen everything else and we (seriously) said, “well, how bad can it be?” I mean, it can’t be worse than Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. No. Every time I thought to myself, “this cannot possibly get any worse” it managed to exceed my expectations and, indeed, get more miserable.
It really says something about a movie when the film’s fucking director calls it a piece of shit. The film feels like someone grabbed a bunch of Philip K. Dick novels, tore two pages out of each, and then stapled them together. It is a disjointed, horrid mess and positively reeks of studio interference.
No plot element makes sense, there are holes large enough to fly Coca-Cola branded airplanes through (yes, there is one), and (best of all) there is no resolution to what flayed plot there is. None. Nothing. Zip.
There is one redeeming quality. Well, two. The first is that there are lot of nice touches with the visuals . . . from time to time. However, the sheer singleminded drive of the film towards Shittytown prevents this from being a check in the “win” column.
The second is Michelle Yeoh, who should dump whatever guy she’s with and become my next ex-wife. However, there isn’t anyone there who can catch the balls she throws, so she ends up being wasted.
Had I been watching this film on DVD, I’d have popped it out and thrown it back to Netflix.
Skip it. Burn it. Torch it.
Comments on Babylon A.D.: Unrelenting Shittiness
Epic fail
I feel sorry for Kassovitz. The guy saw the potential for another Blade runner. he had it figured out, the market was still hungry for more since the matrix… people were used to seeing Disel as the moral/amoral antihero and Fox fucked him long and hard with burning pokers of tedium. The same brand, make and model number as those that insist that if tom cruise is in a movie, there must be a love interest. you know?
I can only hope that this thing hasnt eaten his career, the poor bastard.
I was just thinking last night, hm, maybe I’ll DVD it later but now I shall avoid. I wonder if the based-on novel is any good.
The internets says that the book is actually pretty good, and that appears to be part of the Director’s hatred: he has spent, like, five years working a screenplay for it.
The movie seriously felt like that hellish “Wizard of Earthsea” movie that the Sci-Fi channel raped my childhood with. Or the “Dune” remake. Just bad.
I didn’t think the SciFi “Dune” was terrible, but it certainly wasn’t great. The Earthsea (don’t even call it “Wizard of Earthsea” because it was like, “Hey, let’s just throw in about half of Tombs of Atuan even though it happens, like, 50 years later! Yeah!”) series was terrible.
I was thinking of Babylon AD because I have a soft spot for crappy action/scifi movies (I just watched Doomsday, which is half Mad Max and half Connecticut Yankee and half Resident Evil and all shit, except for the main girl’s haircut which I wish I could emulate but it probably wouldn’t work) but you’ve dissuaded me.