Babylon (2022) Review

Early Hollywood days and how you could quickly rise, but also quickly fall! We follow a few different characters during this era and see it was never going to be easy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Starting in the 1920s in Los Angeles we are taken through decades and the way Hollywood was viewed and somewhat formed. The ambition of pretty much every single person, and how utterly outrageous everything was put across. If the opening scene of a crazy wild party and then a man with a prostitute having her wee on him didn’t set it all up, I’m not sure if anything would. Fully admit at that point I really had no clue what I was letting myself in for, but accepted why it was an 18!

The journey all starts during the silent movie era and crosses into the world of talkies and how it wasn’t a simple thing to do at all. We have big star Jack Conrad, young Manny Torres who wants nothing more than to be on movie sets and get involved in it all and then Nellie LaRoy attempting to become an actress and would stop at nothing to get to that stage. Sidney Palmer, to show how race was difficult to get particular work and highlighted many issues and problems.

Babylon is a difficult film and I found myself totally loving one scene and massively hating the next. It didn’t really have the best flow to it in all honesty, with many moments feeling like it was put in to totally shock the audience. I was at times left wondering how Damien Chazelle went from the genius of La La Land which is one of my favourite films of all time I must add, to this rather messy film. I thought I was totally lost until we hit the tie in with Singin’ in the Rain which brought me back on side a little bit and made sense. I mean I know that film was an inspiration for La La Land as well.

Given the 3 hour and 9 minute running time, which doesn’t ever bother me but I did find myself wondering how long was left at different moments. A big struggle for me as well was that this has again confirmed that I really dislike Margo Robbie’s acting, I find nothing impressive about her performance at all. Quite frankly could not understand why Manny was even bothered about the waste of space Nellie. I enjoyed Brad Pitt’s performance and he was given some good moments and rather deep moments as well. Diego Calva was engaging from start to finish (luckily). Jovan Adepo was certainly a highlight as well.

In terms of rating the film I ended up sticking on 3 stars mainly because of some very impressive scenes, the standout was the frustrating scene in a talkie with the sound and everyone becoming so stressed felt very real. Six people overall walked out of the screening I attended, the first two after an hour which I guess was fair enough. But the final four were in twos and left with only 30 minutes left, which I felt was strange like you’ve made it so far by that point you might as well finish. I guess the eating of something was just too much for them.

Firmly on the fence for this film and unsure if I would actually recommend it or not. As quite frankly it had a lot of bizarre and strange moments from start to finish. Pretty sure I heard a very similar piece of music to City of Stars though!