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Babylon, which we learn is the movie industry’s term for Hollywood, begins in Bel Air, California, 1926, as aspiring producer Manny Torres (Diego Calva) is putting the early effort into his career, by ensuring an elephant is transported to a party, up a hill, yet it has a big poo problem…
Over the course of the next 3 hours and 9 minutes, the Damien Chazelle‘s (Whiplash) film follows the rise and fall of a handful of characters making their way in the movie business.
Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie – The Suicide Squad) is a new actress who isn’t yet a star, but pretends she is, and is about to become a big name in the silent movie era, while Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt – Bullet Train) is an established big name, but his star is on the wane. You’ll also learn about Manny’s situation as the film goes on, but there’s also the addition of up-and-coming trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo – Jack Ryan) as sound and ‘talkies’ come to the movies for the first time.
But the three-hour opus begins with this most decadent of parties wit a ton of drugs and excess, where there’s a lot of people having some ‘hows your father’, (and because it’s an 18-cert) it shows a woman urinating on a man – albeit not directly, so it’s inferred more than anything, plus Chinese lesbian singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) singing about My Girl’s Pussy… Mrs Slocombe would be proud!
That said, this section does give us a well-choreographed dance number, so it’s certainy visually impressive and, as such, this means the title card, showing the film’s name, comes 33 minutes into the film, which is certainly one of the longest I’ve come across. Most films these days don’t even seem to bother until the very end.
Babylon is essentially a disparate set of scenes, such as showing Jack going off to make a film, a Harvey Weinstein-style producer in Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm), and a potential rival to Nellie in Constance Moore (Samara Weaving), who I actually thought was Ms Robbie playing two roles, but no, it’s a very similar-looking actress from 2019’s Ready Or Not.
But while the whole shebang goes on for three hours, I can’t remember a huge amount about it. There’s an intriguing scene late on with Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man: No Way Home More Fun Stuff Version) as a movie exec who you’d rather stay many miles from, and it shows some compromises made in the job, such as Stanley having to make his face completely black, since he’s not quite black enough.
Jean Smart has a good turn as gossip queen Elinor St. John, but there’s an odd early scene where we see Nellie visiting her mum in a mental asylum, but this is only a brief scene, and then the idea is quickly abandoned by the script.
Beyond that, all that came to mind was what *wasn’t* shown than what was. I saw the trailer a number of times in the cinema, showing Brad Pitt getting onto a small table, then dancing a bit before falling over the balcony and into the pool, but the take used in the film just shows him getting onto the table, stumbling slightly and falling over the balcony.
Similarly, a moment later, the trailer shows him in the pool, face down, as if he’s about to drown. While he’s in that state, there’s a camera cut to another character in the scene watching him, before it goes back to Brad, before he eventually wakes up and climbs out of the pool. However, the scene plays out just a bit longer in the trailer than it did in the film, and I think both scenes worked out better in the trailer, this one because it really made it look like he WAS in peril.
There’s also weird face movements from Diego Calva, about 30 seconds into the teaser, which is from a take not used in the film. It just stood out as odd in the teaser, but I see it’s because they’re on cocaine.
However, I’ve seen lins in trailers for Deadpool 2, True Lies and others which are done better in the trailers, but left out of the film – and sometimes not replaced with anything, such as when Cable is firing at Deadpool in the truck, the latter defending himself with his swords to slice through the bullets. Very odd.
Let’s also talk about the box office receipts. Babylon has a budget of around $80, plus another $160m in publicity – since you couldn’t move for advertising for this film, which is odd when it restricts itself with an 18-certificate, since these are quite rare these days. However, it won’t turn a profit (which would require a take of $250m approx), since in the first four weeks in the US (leading up to the UK date), it amassed just $15. For the rest of the world in just over a week, it’s taken another $26m, so Paramount are taking a bath on this one. It’s far from the worst film of the year, but didn’t deserve to crash like this.
And I’ve got used to preparing for longer films, even when they didn’t really need to run that long, such as Avatar: The Way Of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The trick, for me, is to barely drink anything that day beforehand – maybe one cup of tea max (presuming I’m going around 1-3pm for a film’s start time, and use the loo once the trailers begin, after you’ve sat through the ads. Then you’ve only got a few mins before it starts.
Conversely, Don’t Worry Darling runs for 2 hours, and feels like it was only 2/3 of the way through the plot when it ends, so a third hour of that would’ve improved it.
Ultimately, Babylon gives us four characters to be followed in this movie, whereas a much better bet – Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, from 1999, followed NINE characters and that was superb. For Babylon, however, It’s a mess, but usually visually interesting, and includes a fight with a snake.
As an aside, at 3hrs 9mins, this is the fourth-longest film I’ve ever seen in the cinema, following Avatar: The Way Of Water (3hrs 12mins), Titanic (3hrs 14mins) and Schindler’s List (3hrs 15mins).
Babylon is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 189 minutes
Release date: January 20th 2023
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Format: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic Atlas Scope, Super 35); 1.33:1 (some scenes)
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 5.5/10
Director: Damien Chazelle
Producers: Marc Platt, Matthew Plouffe
Screenplay: Damien Chazelle
Music: Justin Hurwitz
Cast:
Jack Conrad: Brad Pitt
Nellie LaRoy: Margot Robbie
Manny Torres: Diego Calva
Sidney Palmer: Jovan Adepo
George Munn: Lukas Haas
Lady Fay Zhu: Li Jun Li
Ina Conrad: Olivia Wilde
Bob Levine: Flea
Elinor St. John: Jean Smart
Robert Roy: Eric Roberts
Jimmy: Cutty Cuthbert
Truck Driver: JC Currais
Elephant Wrangler: Jimmy Ortega
Dale: Shane Powers
Jane Thornton: Phoebe Tonkin
Orville Pickwick: Troy Metcalf
Joe Holiday: Hansford Prince
Reggie: Telvin Griffin
Gho Zhu: Cici Lau
Sam Wong Zhu: David Lau
Constance Moore: Samara Weaving
Don Wallach: Jeff Garlin
Kyle: John Macey
Silvia Torres: Karen Bethzabe
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.