'Yet this Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt trainwreck was nominated for five Golden Globes.'
“Babylon,” released today, is a film about Hollywood excess. It begins in the 1920s in the early days of cinema, as the industry transitions from silent pictures to talkies. Margot Robbie plays a young star named Nellie LaRoy who wills herself a career, burns bright and then implodes. Brad Pitt plays another A-list actor destined for irrelevance. Diego Calva stumbles into a Hollywood executive job and tries to guide Robbie’s career while shielding her from her worst impulses .
The aesthetic could best be described as a pullout magazine ad for perfume. The movie is so maximal, so latticed with ornate set pieces, so glossy with sensory overload that you can almost smell it. But it is good that you cannot smell it, because in the first five minutes an elephant projectile-defecates directly into the camera.
The budget of the film is about $80 million. I suppose when you make a movie as successful as “La La Land” and pitch what’s essentially a bizarro companion piece, the blank checks start rolling in. I’m a sucker for blockbusters and charisma spigots like Robbie and Pitt, which is perhaps why this movie upset me so much.The story line is the rise and fall of LaRoy’s career, backdropped by the evolution of the film industry.
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