ReelBob: ‘Babylon’ ★★

By Bob Bloom

Writer-director Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” is a raunchy and raucous feature about a tumultuous time in Hollywood when the industry was transformed from the art of silent movies to the upheaval of sound pictures.

Chazelle’s three-plus-hour opus plays like a mocking homage to “Singin’ in the Rain” that, instead of highlighting song and dance, concentrates on tits, ass and drugs.

“Babylon,” which unspools as if on a cocaine high, follows the trajectories of wanna-be star Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), silent-film idol Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) and Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant who dreams of working in the movie business.

Chazelle sets the mood from the outset: first, with Manny herding an elephant to a party at the home of a movie mogul, to the debauchery at the shindig — that includes a few perverted sexual encounters and piles of white powder— to Manny’s first encounter with Nellie, who literally crashes the gathering.

The tone is perplexing. Chazelle is seemingly satirizing the era, while simultaneously embracing its artistry and excesses. His notion is you can’t have one without the other.

“Babylon” would have been better served if Chazelle had focused less on the dissipations and more on the creativity of those making movies.

Chazelle’s undisciplined approach leaves “Babylon” without a grounding center. He presents more a series of vignettes than a cohesive story, despite following the tried-and-true formula of depicting the rise and fall of its protagonists.

Admittedly, “Babylon” is entertaining. Even at 188 minutes, it keeps you engaged. How can you not like a movie that includes a diarrhetic elephant, a midget with a phallic-shaped pogo stick and Nellie vomiting in the face of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst?

To quote an Ira Gershwin lyric, “Who could ask for anything more?”

Chazelle paints a very broad canvas that touches upon industry stereotyping of Black and Asian performers, the fickleness of audiences and the hypocrisy of a studio system that, while publicly preaching morality, privately ignores its stars’ sexual proclivities — including lesbianism — as long as they are not discovered.

Like the movie, the performances are widely varied. Robbie’s Nellie is a living-in-the-moment wild child, clawing her way to the top with reckless abandon. She is a feral combination of her Harley Quinn from “Suicide Squad” and Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont from “Singin’ in the Rain.”

She pursues her dream of stardom with reckless abandon, not caring about reputation or consequences.

Calva’s Manny is a romantic who sees movies as having the ability to reach people’s hearts and souls. He is more interested in art than money. When he becomes a studio executive, he is more pragmatic, even when dealing with those he cares for.

Pitt’s arc is a tragic one. During the silent-film era, Conrad is a man of excess — a workaholic in his professional life, doing whatever it takes to produce and star in a hit — and, in his private life, guzzling booze and jumping from one unsuccessful marriage to another.

The arrival of sound finds Conrad’s career declining. Chazelle borrows a sequence from — again — “Singin’ in the Rain” in which an audience mocks Conrad’s delivery of dialogue.

His character seems to be inspired by silent film idol John Gilbert, whose career took a steep decline in the early 1930s.

“Babylon” is not a bad movie; it’s simply too scattershot and bloated. It’s entertaining and excessive. It’s definitely not dull.

Cinematically, it’s stuffing 10 pounds of ideas and situations into a five-pound container.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.

BABYLON
2 stars out of 4
(R), graphic nudity, crude sexual content, drug use, bloody violence, language