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This is a borderlands movie review (or roast). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Borderlands, it is a co-op shooter that follows a group of vault hunters in the Borderlands. The game consists mainly of missions and quests with an emphasis on the characters and the insane amount of different weapons and loot. It’s creative as it is fun and a great time with friends. I was really shocked to hear that they would be adapting into a movie but even more shocked by who would be in it. A wide range of well-established and respectable actors, some of which always hold it down in no matter what movie they are in, that is until this mess of a movie. Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, I was surprised but we’ll get to the casting in just a second.
The movie follows Lilith as our lead character as returns to her home planet Pandora, and forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits. Together, they battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora's most explosive secrets. It is based in the world of Borderlands but doesn’t follow any particular story in the games. So now that we’ve gotten the plot out of the way, where do we begin with this mess of a movie.
Let’s start with the acting and the casting. From the very first scene I already knew things were going to be bumpy. Kevin Hart delivers his lines with as much enthusiasm as someone who’s never touched the games before and I can guarantee he hasn’t. Kevin Hart alone is one of my biggest gripes in the movie, the role they have him play is that of Roland, a tall, gritty solider type, not saying that Kevin Hart couldn’t do that but he is just not even in my first 200 people to pick for this role and somehow he snatched it. Not to meniton that this role is not a funny one, its a more serious one and he cannot do serious. I think he’s hilarious as a comedian but not as a more serious role, I couldn’t take him seriously. He was here for the Hollywood paycheck and completely out of his element in the worst way possible.
Cate Blanchett is okay as our lead, Lilith. She voices over the really lackluster scripts, she’s a phenomenal actress and always holds it down, she really did what she could with the lines she was given. Her dialogue is very much voice over and exposition, just like in the game itself, where characters speak to you through the walkie talkie system and break down certain things happening in real time. I give them props for sticking with this form of raw exposition like in the game, but unfortunately, this doesn’t really translate well into movies, it just sounds awkward and rigid, it doesn’t work well.
Tiny Tina played by Arianna Greenblatt, is pretty good actually and had enough charisma to deliver most of her lines well, being a mischievous and firecracker of a character. I think the best character and performance was Jack Black as Claptrap. As one of the most iconic characters of the game series, it was important that they got this right. He sounds just like him and I feel like the lines they gave him were funny and very close to the character in the game. I found myself laughing and thanking the screen that he was able to hold it down like he did because everything else was mediocre, and that’s putting it lightly. Wrapping up our little group of misfits we have Jamie Lee Curtis, which doesn’t really have all that much screen time and is just a bit boring of a character, not much to her. She does a good job all things considered but she doesn’t have much to do, even if they try to force her as a major plotpoint later on.
But perhaps the worst actor and character in the movie is the Villian by the name of Atlas. No offense against Edgar Ramirez, the actor that plays him, but jesus christ the performance and character was atrocious. A rushed, awkward, and bland character that has zero life and personality. This could’ve been played by anyone and it still would’ve fallen flat. Gary Oldman couldn’t have saved this role because of how he’s written. Everytime he opened his mouth to speak it had no omf to it and he barely has enough screentime to establish any kind of ersonality. When he spoke he made Kevin Hart look like he gave an Oscar winning performance. I don’t know weather to blame the script or the actor, but I’m thinking its both.
#borderlands #roast #moviereview #jackblack
17 сен 2024
