Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Babylon A.D. (2008)

This is topic Babylon A.D. (2008) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 08-31-2008, 09:46 PM:

CINEMA: 13th Avenue Warren, Wichita, KS
AUDITORIUM: 14 (the Grand)
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital Cinema DLP/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Screen door effect on high contrast scenes due to the size of the screen and where I sat (given the screen size and technology, it was a great presentation really).
RATING: Two stars (out of four)

BEFORE THE SHOW AT FREDDY'S: The most stunningly beautiful skinny teenage hippie girl you've ever seen is eating with a tall skinny glasses-wearing nerd. She's almost Barbie doll perfect shaped, long legs, long natural brown hair, wearing a blouse with wide sleeves and bell bottom jeans. They could have cast her on Swingtown as is and doubled the ratings. She's finding every excuse there is to touch him playfully. She SO wants him to kiss her. And he doesn't get it. He's TOTALLY clueless. That kind of stuff NEVER happened to me. I'm about ready to kick him in the balls.

What the...Diesel is doing another "Fast and the Furious"?

That new Coen Brothers movie is going to be one of their crappy ones, isn't it.

THE PLOT: A virgin pregnant with twins needs a ride to New York to be a showcase for some religion. Wackiness ensues.

This has no relation to the Babylon television series that I know of. It's just another cheap sci-fi action show with battle scenes in cages and cars made to look futuristic with cheap sheet metal effects. But some of the action kicks ass, so it's not a complete waste of time. The snow machine/drone chase was great.

The ending is...uh...rushed...and makes little sense. But that's a positive, because the movie was shorter that way.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-01-2008, 12:25 PM:

My Niece watched Babylon A.D. this past Friday with one of her friends from school. She said it was "awesome."

Considering the movie is currently rating a very poor 04% at Rotten Tomatoes and didn't manage to even crack the top 10 ranks in weekend box office earnings the appeal of this movie seems very limited. If you're a 15 year old girl who salivates over Vin Diesel then you might like this movie. Other categories of viewers are staying away in droves.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 09-01-2008, 04:51 PM:

Bobby where are you getting your numbers from? Babylon A.D. was #2 on the weekend with an est. 9.565 mil. Tropic was ahead of it with an est. 11.505. Last time I checked the number 2 was in the top 10 [Razz]

On to the movie, it started strong and had a good chance. As you get closer to the end, it starts to go south real fast. I will say this, if the Director tells you its "Violent and stupid" then you know its not going to be good. Now the above quote shouldn't be taken out of context. The Director didn't have say over the final cut of the film, the one he turned in was cut by 45+ min and made from a Hard R movie to a PG-13 movie. Him and Vin Diesel won't back this film now that its been released.

2.5/5 [thumbsup]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-02-2008, 09:02 AM:

quote: Kurt Zupin
Bobby where are you getting your numbers from?

At the time I posted, both the Rotten Tomatoes and MSNBC web sites didn't have Babylon A.D. listed in the top 10 for the weekend box office numbers. Had to be a typo on the part of whatever source they were using. I thought that seemed strange, but with the measly 4% rating at RT, it sort of made sense.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 09-02-2008, 11:55 AM:

yeah don't know where they got there info from, it was a dismall weekend for everyone involved though. Just bad

Posted by Shane Cooper (Member # 2510) on 09-03-2008, 01:02 AM:

Director disses movie

It is never a good sign when the director says it is no good.

Posted by Reid Helford (Member # 4668) on 09-03-2008, 01:36 PM:

We are gonna play it but can't get any one-sheets to put up for it. Fox has been out of one-sheets for weeks and will not print more. I am going to make a little poster in crayon I think.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 09-04-2008, 09:49 PM:

If they can't supply you with advertising products... and it's opened so dismally... and you know it... then why take it?

Posted by Reid Helford (Member # 4668) on 09-13-2008, 10:38 PM:

Absolutely right. We dumped it and will run Traitor in its place.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 09-14-2008, 06:50 AM:

I wouldn't say thats really a step up from Babylon A.D. but goodluck with it.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 10-11-2008, 07:29 AM:

There's intelligent sci-fi, and there's big dumb sci-fi. Babylon A.D. stars Vin Diesel so naturally this film firmly resides in the latter category. But you gotta love Vin; he's an actor with limits and he knows what those limits are. Want a charismatic ball buster? Think Vin. Want a tough-talking, growly-voiced, testosterone junkie? Vin's your dude. Need a nihilistic mercenary for a near-apocalyptic sci-fi actioner? Get Vin on the phone, he's your man. You won't find him in a Shakespearean play or a Jane Austin adaptation but Vin's "Vin" and that's all that matters. By virtue of that logic then, if you take the "Vin Factor" out of the equation, it all goes downhill rapidly.

Babylon A.D.'s unoriginal premise - nihilistic hero protects fragile human weapon - immediately conjures images of other, better films such as The Fifth Element and Serenity. The weapon-chick in this movie even sports Jovovich-style elfin features and an exotic accent. Furthermore, for an action flick there's not much action and what there is tends to be a jump-cut shaky-cam mess, and there's a penchant for showing dead animals which becomes a little disturbing.

The film seems to be striving for Children Of Men in its tone but winds up more Children Of Men For Dummies such is its lack of an underlying, detailed mythos; instead sci-fi elements are introduced on the fly as required by each scene. Need a high octane action sequence? No worries, just dial up some futuristic armed UAVs to chase our protagonists. Need to establish a near apocalyptic future setting? Have our heroes travel through a "radiation zone"; that'll do it.

The films big twist (an immaculate conception of....wait for it.....twins!) bears no impact whatsoever. This is probably due to the fact that scant hints at holy significance merely arise when it is narratively convenient. The result is a shallow film whose attempts at earnestness are nullified by an audience which refuses to take it seriously.

There's some interesting Zemeckis-style "impossible" camera shots (invisible camera reflection shots, cameras receding through glass windows etc.), not all of which work and those that don't merely serve to cheapen the film further.

Some of the cast (Gerard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Yeoh) should have known better than to be involved in this - the project probably looked better on paper - but the long and the short of it is that this movie is an unabashed Vin Diesel vehicle and it suits him to a tee. To that affect the film is, despite its not inconsiderable shortcomings, at the very least, mildly entertaining.

6.5 out of 10.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 10-27-2008, 10:20 PM:

This could have been much more than it turned out to be which was pretty much the worst thing I've seen in the cinema this year. First of all it needed to be an R-rated film so that the glamourised and constant violence would overshadow the lack of acting and script. Even a dodgy explanation of how the world got the way it appears in the film would have given more meaning to the entire piece. And the ending is just stupid, anything else would have been better. Would give it 4 out of 10.