Babylon is just one of those movies that is too long for no good reason. It’s becoming a trend nowadays and I’m not happy about it.

At first, Babylon comes out swinging. The beginning of the movie is chaotic and really fun. It reminded me of The Wolf of Wall Street in a way. Margot Robbie is fantastic and it promises you the world. Until the half way mark, the time flies by, but it goes south reeeaaaaallllyyy fast after that.

The whole tone of the movie changes… The arcs felt forced and were not fun to watch after that. The fancy party (especially the vomit part) was bizarre. Manny’s sudden upswing in the world felt way too sudden. The ‘blackface scene’ was just there to upset the audience. We see way to little of Nellie’s gambling problem for it too come back in this big way. And the whole sequence in ‘the asshole of LA’ added nothing to the story and is just there to shock you one last time. It’s was bad choice after bad choice in the second half.

I get that they wanted to show the whole old vs. new thing, the rise of cinema as we know it and the icons that get lost on the way to new things. But the first and the last part were way to different for it to be a coherent masterpiece.

Honestly, I’m sad that it turned out this way. I was hoping for more and it looked like it was going that way at first. It’s super disappointing and I feel generous when I give it a 6/10. This could’ve been more.