"Borderlands" - a movie review-Dustin Dopps Contributor
Photo Use Courtesy of Lionsgate Studios
I'm a bit late to watching Borderlands, but that's because the reviews were so bad. It currently sits at "10% positive" from reviewers, which isn't great.
If you don't know what Borderlands is, it is actually based on a video game series. The games are what are known as "looter shooters" and they are made to look almost like cartoons, graphically. You go through the story, trying to find and open hidden vaults so you can upgrade your weapons and gear. It is called a "looter shooter" because most of the gameplay is shooting (either in first person or from a vehicle) and you get better and better gear or "loot" as the game goes on. The loot is somewhat random, so no two people will have the exact same playthrough.
So how do you make a movie out of that? Good question. And that's probably why the movie has such bad reviews. It's an almost impossible proposition.
The movie is written and directed by Eli Roth, who is most known for horror movies, but this isn't a horror movie. It's an action comedy, I guess, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, the voice of Jack Black (he plays a robot named Clap Trap), and Jamie Lee Curtis.
It's an odd cast for a sci-fi action movie, and I didn't even mention the girl Tina (known in the games as Tiny Tina) who likes to blow things up. Or the guy in the mask whose name escapes me who is just muscle.
As you watch the movie and you hear everyone say that Tina is the key to opening the big vault, you aren't fooled. It is clear that Cate Blanchett is the real "special person." But that's fine. And the action and humor are fine too, I guess. It's not boring. It's not terrible. It's just a weird, one-off kind of movie.
But it *does* have problems, which I will list now.
Swearing. There is a TON of swearing and most of it is the s-word, and the movie didn't need it. It feels shoehorned in.
Humor. The humor doesn't always work. The characters drive through a field where somehow alien urine is spraying out of geysers (how? why?) and Tina rolls the window down and urine goes on everyone. Funny! See? But there are a couple of clever bits that are actually funny, so it feels very hit-or-miss. Kevin Hart is decent. Jack Black is annoying, but every once in a while is clever. It's just not the best.
But here's the worst sin the movie commits: it is derivative.
The very first scene has a character in a helmet that looks kinda like a stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars. The character gasps and wheezes and I thought immediately of a scene from "Spaceballs" and, sure enough, the character says he can't breathe in the mask. It's a rip off. And then when Cate Blanchett shows up she quotes, verbatim, from Detective Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon movies.
It isn't original. You're watching and enjoying things, then there's a rip-off of another movie and it completely takes you out of the story. You don't really care about the characters because they are cardboard cutouts from other movies.
There's also bad logic. At one point they are in a tunnel they've never been in and Jamie Lee Curtis tells the robot "go through that small tunnel and open the door for us at the end." How does she know where the small tunnel goes? How does she know there's a locked door at the end? It isn't explained. It just ... is.
And that's the movie. It is. It exists. It's not terrible and if it didn't have so much swearing I'd actually recommend it. But as a whole it falls apart. And I've played the video games, so I'm the target audience!
I give it a B- or a C+. It's fine. It just isn't exciting or fresh or new.
(The digital masks the characters wear sometimes are actually pretty cool. It has some good ideas like that. I just wish the whole movie was original.)
