Babel

March 19, 2007

Rated: R Runtime: 142 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I hate these kinds of movies. It’s easy to pan a badly made movie, but it’s not so easy to do it to a well-made flick. There is no doubt, however, that Babel is well made. Creative integrity, something that is a bit of a commodity outside of the indy market, is maintained from beginning to end here and that, ironically enough, is part of the problem.

Babel The crux of the problem, though, is that the concept, while intriguing at an intellectual level, doesn’t make for very exciting movie watching. Essentially speaking, this seems to be a visually documented “proof” that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can spawn a hurricane on the other side of the world. Again, a neat premise, but when it unfolds on the screen, it’s with the dispassion of a nature documentary and ends up being rather boring. The story involves 4 families spread across the world - Japan, Morocco, Mexico and the U.S. - each connected by a previous and very innocent event.

The only real emotion and life in the film that I could connect to was the story of Chieko, a deaf mute schoolgirl living and enduring adolescence in Tokyo. Of course, she’s quite desperate for some monkey lovin’, has a hot body, and isn’t afraid to show it off so that may be the reason I liked her screentime. But I’m afraid that horny japanese schoolgirls in uniform can only help so much.

Cate Blanchett, one of my very favorite movie gals, is completely wasted here. I think it would have been SO much better had her position been swapped with that of her husband (played adequately by Brad Pitt) since not nearly as much would be going to waste. The rest of the cast is made up of relative unknowns and, while reasonably good actors, I sometimes got the feeling that I was watching a bizarre reality show on the National Geographic channel.

If you’re really wanting a good movie experience, don’t waste your time with this one. If you are intellectually curious and think you can stomach 2-star quality, then you can certainly find worse ways to kill two and a quarter hours. Getting bikini waxed comes immediately to mind.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 2 Stars, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, DVD, Drama, R, Rinko Kikuchi