Review: Borderlands

Taking a look at what is sure to be a Hollywood Flop!

I want to preface this review by stating I have never played any of the Borderlands games and am basing my entire opinion of the film on the film itself.

 Let’s start with the good. I feel like Kevin Hart and Cate Blanchette did a fair enough job with the material they were given. That is saying a lot as the dialogue in parts was spotty and felt forced. It is also unfortunate that I cannot say the same for the other actors in the film. We'll get to whay that is i a moment.

The practical effects were well done and helped capture the Mad Max like vibe I assume they were aiming at, and there were a couple of fight scenes that were entertaining.

Now, let’s unpack the bad… and there is a lot of it to unpack! I mentioned those practical effects looking good, well the CGI was not. There is a scene with hover bikes in the film that looked so bad that I leaned over to my buddy and said, “Those look worse than the flying chariots in Flash Gordon from 1980”. It was a bit sarcastic, but only just!

Jack Black was the voice of Claptrap, the robotic comedy relief only he wasn’t funny. I’m not sure I completely blame him for it as much as I do the biggest problem I had with the film, but like my previous comments about the acting, we’ll get to that. I get the impression that they let him vamp a lot of his dialogue and then chose bits they found humorous, but they were dropped in during moments they just didn’t fit, and most of what we got felt like 12-year-old fart jokes.

As I mentioned, I never played the game, and maybe that is why the story felt thrown together, but as it exists as a movie it needs to be made clearer to the audience. The end scene was very rushed and there was zero explanation as to why everyone was suddenly celebrating (not just our main characters, EVERYONE).

All of this can likely be attributed to the biggest problem I had with Borderlands, the directing. Eli Roth, known for his gory horror films it felt like he bit off more than he could handle with a blockbuster feature. The pacing was hurried (we literally have a voiceover feeding exposition of scenes we’re watching), some of the takes they ended up choosing were ineffective and the acting felt stilted.

Let me be clear, I did not completely hate this film and there were parts that I found, overall, entertaining. I didn’t walk out angry (I’m looking at you Madame Web) but I also was not impressed. Had Borderlands been a $15 million dollar movie I think I might have been able to forgive some of the downfalls and enjoyed it as a “So bad its good” sort of thing, but this was a $150 Million-dollar, summer blockbuster. A budget that big means we can’t even appreciate it as B-movie, which essentially is what it turned out to be.

For me this is a swing and a miss, and I give it a C- and advise anyone interested to wait for streaming (something I RARELY do). Had the effects been better, or the dialogue not so out of place it might have hit a C+ but the directing was always going to keep it out of that A or B rating.