‘Borderlands’ review: Cate Blanchett video game disaster is the worst movie of the year
movie review
BORDERLANDS
Zero Stars
ZERO STARS.
Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material). In theaters.
Sometimes when a job doesn’t work out, the former employee will omit that short-lived work experience from her resume.
For Cate Blanchett, that erasable gig is the unspeakably terrible new movie “Borderlands.”
If I was the two-time Oscar winner, I’d hire a crack team to work around the clock to scrub all mention of it from the Internet. The film is that embarrassing.
Unfortunately, for the time being, the star of “Tár” and “Blue Jasmine” is stuck as the lead of the worst movie of the year — a grueling, 102-minute endurance test that’s as lifeless as the video game it’s based on.
And Blanchett is not entirely free from blame either. She reads the lines, such as they are, like a TSA agent at the crack of dawn.
The actress has no palpable connection to her ragtag, barely-alive ensemble, including Jamie Lee Curtis (another Oscar winner), Kevin Hart (an almost Oscar host) and funnyman Jack Black.
Not Blanchett’s fault, but she also dons an ugly bright red wig that might have been inspired by Dairy Queen soft-serve.
Everything about “Borderlands” is appalling: the acting, writing, direction, design. As the characters trudge through the sand on their hunt for the mysterious Vault, the desperate audience scours the screen for anything to enjoy — or, at the very least, understand. Our search proves fruitless.
A check-cashing Blanchett plays Lilith, a no-nonsense bounty hunter who’s tasked with recovering the lost daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) on the planet Pandora.
“I’m not a babysitter,” barks Lilith, as off-putting as her movie.
Whereas the Pandora of James Cameron’s “Avatar” took hundreds of millions of dollars to bring to dazzling life, my casual estimate of director Eli Roth’s “Borderlands” budget is about a buck fifty.
Lilith finds the bunny-eared girl named Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, who I bet misses her “Barbie” press tour right about now), who says, “Miss Lilith, can you grab my badonkadonk?”
A stupid joke, she’s referring to a toy rabbit.
Tiny Tina, crying-baby-on-an-airplane annoying, could be the key to opening the Vault, which contains a vague weapon … I think.
To unearth the lost sort-of treasure, the pair join with Roland (Hart), Dr. Tannis (Curtis), a scientist, a “psycho” named Krieg (Florian Munteanu) and Claptrap the irksome robot (Black), who’s in a competition with Tiny Tina to cause the most movie ticket refunds.
They drive through the desert shooting people like a middling “Mad Max,” only their basic, color-saturated vehicles are more “Thomas the Tank Engine.”
Most of the cast is dressed in the cartoon-punk style of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, but occasionally you’ll spot a nonchalant extra wearing a plain T-shirt.
What happens in the middle of the movie? Who’s to say?
There are some routine fight sequences and it is revealed that one of the heroes is a clone. Truth be told, I never could figure out what was going on beyond the MacGuffin of seeking the Vault.
The dialogue is cluttered with migraine-triggering video game jargon, and the movie makes no effort to stand on its own, like “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” so ably did last year.
There’s hardly any character development or dramatic peaks and valleys in “Borderlands” to hold the viewer’s interest, even for such a brief runtime. And the action is subpar. All we get is Oscar winners debasing themselves.
For instance, when the group discovers the actual, physical key to the Vault, Curtis slowly turns her head, eyes wide, mouth agape, in a recognizably Spielbergian manner. But the scene is shot so poorly — without any style — that the actress looks ridiculous.
Some comic relief is provided, though.
When a person was vaporized during the climactic battle, I laughed.
