Borderlands, 2024.

Directed by Eli Roth.
Starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, Haley Bennett, Janina Gavankar, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Ryann Redmond, Bobby Lee, Olivier Richters, Justin Price, and Paula Andrea Placido.

SYNOPSIS:

Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.

An adaptation of the popular cooperative multiplayer open-world video game series, Borderlands doesn’t play to the strengths of exploration or the strengths of co-writer/director Eli Roth as a shock filmmaker. The ultraviolent horror guru seems like an inspired choice on paper, considering these are Mature-rated games that also derive energy and excitement from gore and juvenile humor (typically referencing pop culture or smartly deconstructing video game tropes), but he has bafflingly been given a PG-13 rating to work with. To be fair, one can also imagine this turning out just as lifeless and generic even if Eli Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie had been given the green light to do whatever they wanted because they seem to fundamentally not understand what anyone likes about these games and are packaging it into a cinematic interpretation devoid of any personality.

Simultaneously, not all of these shortcomings should necessarily be attributed to the filmmakers. Borderlands isn’t exactly the type of video game property with strong storytelling or beloved heroes that scream for an adaptation. However, given the game’s visual color and humorous dialogue, there is reason to believe this could work if it elicits laughter and delivers fun variations of the playable characters and sidekicks, possibly fleshing them out in the process. Here, the attempts at comedy are forced to the point of cringe, whereas the story is a generic tale about a teenage girl theorized to have special abilities capable of opening a hidden vault many have tried hunting for.

Everything here is lifeless to the point where it is also a struggle to find things to say, so here’s an anecdote about my opening-night screening (this film was not screened for press in Chicago.) 15 minutes into the film, a random man walks in and sits down, most likely sneaking in after having just finished watching something else. He left after five minutes, presumably because the snarky humor was bombing, the plotting was basic, the action was bland, and the visuals were dull and complemented by costumes that feel more like high-end cosplay. 

Cate Blanchett is the redhaired Lilith, a bounty hunter employed by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to rescue his daughter Tiny Tina (a fan-favorite played by Ariana Greenblatt) from one of his soldiers, Roland (a completely miscast Kevin Hart), aware that she is disposable to her father and locked away, only being used to one day open the vault when it is discovered. Meanwhile, one of the Mad Max-inspired masked psychos (Florian Munteanu) serves as a brute bodyguard for Tiny Tina. Three keys must be collected beforehand; this is based on a video game, after all. Unsurprisingly, everyone comes together and finds themselves on the same side, fighting against Atlas while searching for these keys.

As a game, there would be ample time to run off and cross paths with several kooky side characters offering up side missions that would give the consumer a sense of this world overrun by greedy corporations (a thematic thread the film does nothing with.) Or maybe it would be the right time to dig into the unique shooter mechanics that prioritized exploring and killing as much as possible to be rewarded with special weapon drops of varying damage levels and distinct traits (as far back as the first game, there were thousands of possibilities regarding these sometimes randomly generated firearms.)

Instead, Borderlands is rushing through this generic story (that smashes together multiple aspects and characters from all three games until it comes across as an overstuffed mess, similar to far too many other video game adaptations) like a player only concerned with speeding their way through the plot-centric quests, that’s not the right way to play Borderlands, and that for damn sure isn’t the correct way to adapt it.

Some other characters join the adventure, ranging from comedic robot sidekick Claptrap (for some reason voiced by Jack Black even though it sounds nothing like him and Lionsgate didn’t bother to market the movie, meaning it wouldn’t  have mattered just giving the role to voiceover performer David Eddings again) and Jamie Lee Curtis’ scientifically inclined Tannis (doing almost nothing in the movie but spouting exposition even though she tags along, making it feel like that fourth person in the party who doesn’t provide any real assistance and just racks up Achievements from everyone else’s hard work.)

No matter who they are, everyone feels halfway committed to their video game counterpart in screenplay construction. The bigger issue is that, in doing so, the filmmakers never figure out who these characters are or why anyone should care about them. Technically, you could say the film looks like Borderlands, but even that statement only goes so far since the adaptation is robbed of the aesthetically pleasing cel-shaded animation. The song choices for the action sequences are seemingly selected at random, with encounters against even giant monstrosities lasting about as long as they do in the trailer.

Everything here feels desperate to convince viewers that everyone involved gets and understands Borderlands, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is hesitation in calling the film awful since the actors are trying, and there is a base-level competence to the proceedings, but this is a bore with zero personality. 

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

Mega daughter Niharika Konidela makes her debut as a movie producer with Committee Kurrollu, and it hit the screens today amid significant anticipation. Check out our review to see how it stacks up.

Story:

In the peaceful village of Purushothapalli, West Godavari, a close-knit group of friends-Shiva (Sandeep Saroj), Surya (Yaswanth Pendyala), Subbu (Thrinadh Varma), William (Eshwar Rachiraju), Peddodu (Prasad Behara) and others- share an unbreakable bond. But a sudden dispute between them sends shockwaves throughout the village, disrupting their lives and the community’s harmony. What caused this fallout among the friends? How did their conflict affect the village and its culture? Will they reconcile? And what role does Bujji (Sai Kumar) play in this unfolding drama? The answers will be unveiled on the big screen.

Plus Points:

The film’s promotional campaign set the stage for a lively, youthful entertainer, delivering a blend of humour and heartfelt moments.

Commendable performances from Sandeep Saroj, Thrinadh Varma, Yashwanth Pendyala, and Prasad Behara make their characters come alive, adding depth to the story.

Supporting roles by Kishore Kumar Polimera, Sai Kumar, and others contribute effectively to the film’s appeal.

The childhood scenes are a major highlight, filled with youthful antics that evoke nostalgia and provide plenty of laughs. These well-written moments will surely remind viewers of their golden days.

Minus Points:

While the film shines in comedy and a few emotional scenes, the storyline falls short of being engaging. The plot fails to fully captivate.

The first half is well executed and entertaining, but the momentum wanes in the second half. Some scenes miss the mark emotionally, and the election subplot and climax seem rushed and underdeveloped.

The conflict and reunion scenes could have been more impactful to enhance the drama and emotional engagement. Some scenes appear forced, and confrontations involving characters like Sai Kumar and Goparaju Ramana lack depth. Although the heroines and their romantic subplots are well-crafted, they receive minimal screen time in the second half.

Technical Aspects:

Director Yadhu Vamsi delivers a visually engaging film with entertaining moments, though his writing needs refinement. Anudeep Dev’s music is enjoyable, featuring several standout tracks. The cinematography by Edurolu Raju captures the village setting beautifully, while the editing by Anwar Ali could have been tighter to enhance the film’s pacing. Production values are rich.

Verdict:

On the whole, Committee Kurrollu is a decent youthful comedy-drama that delivers laughs, nostalgia, and strong performances. While the second half lacks engagement and the storyline isn’t particularly captivating, it remains an enjoyable watch for a weekend, especially with friends, offering a generous dose of nostalgia.

123telugu.com Rating: 3/5

Reviewed by 123telugu Team

Click Here For Telugu Review

Articles that might interest you:

An hour after leaving a screening of the new Borderlands movie, directed by Eli Roth (Hostel) and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ariana Greenblatt, I’m staring at a blinking cursor in a blank Google Doc, urging inspiration to strike.

Surely a live-action movie based on the wildly successful edgelord video game franchise from 2K and Gearbox would inspire a couple hundred words, right? Surely the star-studded cast, which includes several Oscar winners (and Jack Black), would prompt a spark of creativity. Surely the vibrant visuals, cacophonous explosions, and poop and pee jokes would destroy the writer’s block dam, sending forth a surge of witty words and succinct sentences. But I’m at a loss.

Borderlands is not just bad, it’s depressing.

On the border of a breakdown

I saw Borderlands at an early screening at Alamo Drafthouse, during which cosplay was encouraged. No one wore costumes, and the theater was solemnly silent, as if we were about to watch archival video of the deadliest WWII battle or found footage from 9/11. R-rated trailers aired before it, prompting me to question if this movie, directed by Roth (known for his gory, gross violence), was rated R (it’s not).

Before I have a chance to double-check the rating, Cate Blanchett’s voice echoes through the theater. “Long ago, our galaxy was ruled by an alien race,” she intones, sounding bizarrely flat for an incredibly talented actor who endeavored to deliver a fun, frenetic performance in another superficial flick: 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. I’m immediately assaulted by aggressive, slap-dash cuts and shimmery CGI images of guns, neon signs, and Psychos, as Blanchett (who plays Lilith, a character who inspired early-twenties me so much I got one of her quotes tattooed) gives us the plot overview with as much energy as a ‘50s housewife who regularly mixes mood stabilizers and martinis.

Lilith tells us that the Eridians laid the foundation of this galaxy, then disappeared, leaving behind a secret vault hidden on the planet Pandora, inside of which are powerful relics of the long-lost civilization. “That sounds like some wacko B.S., huh?” Blanchett asks. I stifle a groan with a huge bite of my burger. Rather than giving moviegoers the free-wheeling wanderlust that the Borderlands games offer, the film is incredibly linear and straightforward: Lilith, a bounty hunter, is hired by the head of arms manufacturer Atlas Industries to track down his daughter Tiny Tina on the planet Pandora.

We’re introduced to almost all of the main cast rather quickly: Hart as Roland, Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Florian Munteanu as a Psycho named Kreig. Roland breaks Tiny Tina out of some kind of facility by way of a fairly bland action sequence, during which he punches a guard and calls him a “fake Stormtrooper-ass bitch.” I guess that means Star Wars exists in the Borderlands universe? It doesn’t improve after this.

If you told me Borderlands used AI for its dialogue, I’d believe you without question. Nearly every line that’s uttered with the kind of fake peppiness I’d reserve for my elementary school cheer competitions is either a limp-dicked “edgy” joke that wouldn’t warrant a single Reddit upvote or a cliche phrase like “I’m too old for this shit” and “This has been a really long day.” I could count on one hand the lines that were thoroughly genuine—or at least not dripping with so much snark they were almost sticky. There is no humanity here, just humorless humans.

When a needle-drop of Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” bleeds into a scene in which it’s playing over the speakers in a Pandoran bar, I nearly slam my head onto the table. What are we doing here?

We need to talk about Tina

Blissfully, Borderlands isn’t that long of a movie, and the breakneck speed at which the film is paced means we meet Jamie Lee Curtis’ Tannis just before I need a pee break (I chugged a beer). Curtis plays her with a socially awkward twitchiness that I didn’t expect from the actor, and while it’s at least an attempt at imbuing the character with a personality, it is incredibly grating. But again, she tried—Blanchett is phoning it in, Hart has no business playing the straight man, and Greenblatt is doing the best she can with material that’s based on a white character doing a blaccent (which the film, thankfully, avoids). But even she can’t save a line read that requires her to say “badonkadonk” in the year of our lord 2024.

And also, not to be ageist, but why the fuck is everyone so old? Lilith is 22 years old in the original Borderlands game and Tannis is in her thirties—aside from the star power afforded by casting Blanchett and Curtis, the only reason for aging up these characters is so they can play matronly figures to Greenblatt’s Tina.

And therein lies the main problem: centering Tina. The plot revolves around her believing she is the child of Eridia and the key to opening the vault, and the film hinges all of the emotional weight on a character who wears a bunny-ear headband and throws explosive teddy bears at people while spewing one-liners like a sugar-crazed 11-year-old in a Fortnite lobby. She does not inspire any sort of empathy, even with Greenblatt’s valiant efforts and Blanchett’s only real acting taking place in their scenes together. It’s like making a Gears of War movie with a Carmine brother at the center—it’s going to be annoying from the jump.

All of this takes place in a weird CGI world that occasionally looks decent but is more often an illegible green-screen mess of explosions or muddy, dark, murky nonsense. Lilith’s flame-orange hair and comic book costume set against a dusty, bland landscape and broken-down industrial buildings is visually and tonally jarring—it’s like the filmmakers got halfway to making a movie inspired by the cel-shaded world of Borderlands and then dumped it all onto the sets used for the Halo series. Speaking of costumes, I’d love to know what the budget was for push-up bras. Tannis, Mad Moxxi, and Lilith all have their breasts pushed up so high they’re nearly in their throats—it is so desperately 2006, so reminiscent of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, that I couldn’t help but giggle. Boobs, am I right?

By the time the film ends and Jack Black’s Claptrap pops up on screen during the credits to lament the loss of his Easter egg, I am ready to go home and cleanse my palate. I need some proper aughts trashiness, some expensive needle drops, and some questionable costumes. I get home, plop down on the couch, and turn on Gossip Girl. At least this has personality.

The Borderlands movie isn’t so good it’s surprising, and it’s not so bad it’s worth a hate-watch. It is simply sad. It feels like the result of a bunch of suits who sat around a glossy mahogany table (like in that one Key and Peele sketch) and reminisced about the early aughts, a time before the financial crisis, a time when the term “cancel” was reserved only for television shows, a time when Muse was one of the biggest rock bands on the planet.

It is devoid of humanity and personality, despite trying very, very hard to establish that it is quirky. It is the woman with frozen peas on her head in the grocery store aisle—she’s so crazzzzzyy, love her! It should not exist.

.