Babylon Movie Reviews Round-Up: Misfire or Masterpiece?
Babylon doesn’t have an IMDb score yet but it does have a critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is around 64%, so definitely not Chazelle’s best scores on the rating site. The critics’ opinions on the film have been quite mixed where one cannot draw a fair conclusion. Some love the film but some don’t for various different reasons. I think without seeing the film and simply based on the film, it is fair to call the film a mixed bad as that is what most of the comments suggests.
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times
“I can’t say I truly enjoyed watching “Babylon,” or that I’d ever want to see it again, but I definitely haven’t stopped thinking about it since screening it…”
Original Score: 3/4
Kevin Maher
Times (UK)
“The film’s propulsive energy is so authoritative that it occasionally threatens to nullify all other elements, but Robbie’s performance is equal to the task and bubbling with awards season kudos.”
Original Score: 4/5
Hannah Strong
Little White Lies
“Chazelle swings for the fences, but Babylon feels like the worst kind of jazz: a loose freestyle comprised of beautiful moments punctuated by bum notes and off-key scatting.”
Original Score: 2/5
David Ehrlich
indieWire
“Burdened with the knowledge that this $80 million studio project could be the last of its kind, “Babylon” refracts Hollywood’s first major identity crisis through the prism of its latest one.”
Original Score: B
Robbie Collin
Daily Telegraph (UK)
“A three-hour storm of sex, drugs, elephants, cocktails, gambling, snake fights, and assorted bodily expulsions.”
Original Score: 5/5
Bill Goodykoontz
Arizona Republic
“It’s not the best movie you’ll see this year, but it’s the most movie by a long shot.”
Original Score: 3/5
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian
“It’s always a pleasure to be in the presence of such black-belt movie stars as Pitt and Robbie and there is something funny in Babylon’s wild, event-movie gigantism.”
Original Score: 3/5
David Rooney
Hollywood Reporter
“No doubt plenty of cool kids will eagerly sign up to be pummeled by the film’s crazed excesses, though just as many will find it exhausting and sour. Even its technical virtuosity feels assaultive.”
Keith Uhlich
Slant Magazine
“The film is a down-in-the-muck advert for an ultimately dewy-eyed vision of the silver screen.”
Original Score: 1/4
Caryn James
BBC.com
“At its best, Chazelle’s film is a cinematic marvel, evidence enough that movies are magical, as it sweeps us into the beautiful, terrible world we recognise as Hollywood even now.”
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
Metro Newspaper (UK)
“Damien Chazelle film’s direction is breathtaking and jaw-dropping…”
Original Score: 5/5
Nick Schager
The Daily Beast
“[A] lumpen, maudlin, misbegotten opus.”
Tomris Laffly
AV Club
“Shimmering, mournful, and riotous, Babylon is one of the year’s best movies, thanks in part to a star-making performance by Diego Calva.”
Original Score: A
Radheyan Simonpillai
CTV’s Your Morning
“La La Land on coke.”
Original Score: 3/5
Johnny Oleksinski
New York Post
“Sometimes it’s dazzling, sometimes it’s derivative. Still, there are worse people to spend three hours with than Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.”
Original Score: 3/4
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
““Babylon” is what movie love really looks like.”
Original Score: 4/4
Brian Truitt
USA Today
“Even with a great turn from Brad Pitt, an impressive showing by newcomer Diego Calva and a bunch of entertaining cameos, the madcap comedy-drama can’t help but run out of creative crazy juice by the end as it unspools into cinematic sentimentality.”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Stephanie Zacharek
TIME Magazine
“Babylon is a manic sprawl that only pretends to celebrate cinema. It’s really about prurience, dumb sensation, self-congratulation and willful ignorance of history.”
Jason Bailey
The Playlist
“It just feels like Chazzelle is trying to do Baz Luhrmann — and, even more embarrassingly, he’s failing at it.”
Original Score: D+
Alonso Duralde
TheWrap
“A hyped-up cocaine conversation of a movie, throwing out lots of ideas and images and mammoth set pieces without ever amounting to anything.”
Babylon has been made on an hefty budget of $110 Million and we can see where the money has gone. Babylon stars Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in the lead with supporting performances from Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, and Tobey Maguire. Babylon is slated to have a limited released in select theatres on 23rd December however, the film will have a wider release worldwide from 6th December 2023.
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