Recxpectations: Babylon

Recxpectations are my recommended expectations people should have when they head to the theaters to see a new movie. I try to keep them as objective as possible but sometimes the feelings seep their way in. Anyway, without further ado, here are my recxpectations for BABYLON, the new film from La La Land’s Damien Chazelle and starring Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, and Brad Pitt.

EXPECT: Boogie Nights set in the 20’s and 30’s. There are so many similarities between these movies that it became distracting, so I feel like it’s best to know going in that this, at times, feels like a remake of Paul Thomas Anderson’s classic. One key difference between the two is that, in Babylon, everyone starts off the movie drugged up and wasted.

EXPECT: spectacle. This is not a story-driven film or a character piece. The main characters are basically archetypes and - in another key difference from Boogie Nights - we rarely see them struggle to make decisions or weigh the consequences of their actions. They’re mostly there to take us through this crazy world and wild time in Hollywood.

DON’T EXPECT: the film to feel like three hours. NOTE: The film’s runtime is indeed three hours so prepare for that.
I saw the film at Alamo Drafthouse, one of the places that serves you food and drinks at your seat. Usually, they bring the check with around 30 minutes left in the movie and I was surprised when I saw my check dropped off because it didn’t seem like 2.5 hours had passed. Because the film is heavy on spectacle and light on slowing things down to let characters marinate on what has happened or even think for a second about what they are doing, the pacing is fast and there’s always something on screen engaging your id. That is until the very end…

EXPECT: an unnecessary epilogue. It didn’t beat out “Bullet Train” for the 2022 Wrap It Up Already! award for movie that just wouldn’t end but it came close.

DON’T EXPECT: Diego Calvas’s character Manny to be the emotional core. When the movie starts, it seems like Manny is going to be the guy the audience connects with but he has almost zero reaction to the insanity around him and he, in particular, almost never seems to struggle with the decisions he makes. He doesn’t grow in the film, he just changes from one scene to the next. Also, DON’T EXPECT his race to be an issue. It felt to me like an odd oversight for a film that takes place in the early 20th century, especially when there are racial issues with other characters.

EXPECT: some bad ADR. It’s ironic that a movie about films changing from silent movies to talkies struggled with the audio but there were some a bunch of moments when the ADR (Additional Dialog Replacement) felt pretty obvious.

In the end, I would recommend going in expecting a wild ride from one often comedic set piece to another in this coked-out ode to Hollywood and all of its problems. It’s a film as messy as Hollwood itself.