I did like crash. Crash had a point. This film is so filled with excess, that it becomes pointless at about the 15 minute mark.

I can't even begin to describe how bad this film is. There are a number
of films that just make you mad. This is one of them. It is a 7 hour
film (feels like it) that should and could have been 90 minutes. It is
excessive, exploitive, often pointless and contains so many scenes that
are so shocking because they are just so over the top that it makes you
cringe. This is one film that has me completely stumped as to where the
critical acclaim is coming from. This is on my worst list for the year,
and nowhere near the best list. Don't listen to the critics. This is
just plain bad.

This is a film that has four separate stories that are connected in the
most tangential ways, that it is a mere excuse to just tell four
stories, none of them are particularly interesting, and then justify
the "connections" in the most ridiculous way. It's like showing someone
choke on a peanut in an Oh Henry Chocolate Bar, and then show the
"connection" that man has with the child that picked the peanut in
Burma who happens to burn his hand at the same time the man chokes.
Sounds confusing? Sounds convoluted? Sounds stupid? Try watching this
movie, you'll get the point.

This is a film that could have been wrapped up in 90 minutes, but
instead, what we get are pointless and excessive shots of 10 minute
drinking binges at a wedding. We see the band playing, people about to
make love that does nothing to further the plot of the story. You have
a young kid who spies on his sister and then masturbates while leaning
back against a rock. You have a deaf girl who tries to screw every
person she can find. You have an Ecstasy fest in a Japanese disco, and
then you have Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett who are literally relegated
to crying and peeing and making out in the film. How this film got made
is one of the great mysteries of the year. And now that it is nominated
for myriad of Golden Globes, it should give everyone who is a would be
writer hope. If this tripe can get made and get an A-list star to back
it, then we can all write a piece of crap and then get it made. My next
story is going to be about a colony of ants that has to coexist with a
family of anorexic and dyslexic Arabs who have an uncle in Japan who
might have sold some sushi to a couple in Australia who might have shot
some dingos with a Beebe gun. They are all connected somehow. George
Clooney and Cameron Diaz are interested in the script.

I'm not really sure what the point of the film is, but everyone in this
film does the wrong thing at the right time. If you are a Mexican woman
with two American kids, would you think the best thing to do is cross
the border while you and your driver have been drinking for 12 hours at
a wedding? Do you not think that would raise suspicions? Do you not
think that the alcohol would be detected? I grew up in a border town,
right across from Detroit (Windsor) and I was nervous crossing the
border sober after coming back from a Red Wings game. How anyone could
be this odiously zealous is beyond me. And I guess you can say that
this stuff happens all the time, but really, does it? Or is this just
another filler in a film filled with incoherent situations performed by
idiotic people? I just can't figure it out.

If you want a plot, then here it is. An American couple are on vacation
in Morocco. One of them gets shot by two young Moroccan boys who are
playing with their new gun in the hills. Then you have a pretty, young,
vibrant, deaf-mute Japanese girl who wants to have sex with every boy
or man she sees. She literally flashes her vagina to a young man in a
shopping mall or whatever hangout they are at. Then she tries to sleep
with her dentist, and then she gets completely naked for a policeman.
And why? Because her mom killed herself and she is now lonely. Then you
have the American couple's kids left alone with their Mexican nanny and
she is told that she cannot go to her own son's wedding because Brad
and Cate are still in Morocco. So she takes them anyway and she has sex
with some dude at the wedding. This entire plot could have been done
away with and the movie still would have been bad, but not as bad.

The Crash-like connections in this film are so minute that they come
across as desperate. The film doesn't flow and Brad and Cate are
terribly miscast as husband and wife. The script in this film is
unbelievably inept and when reading the screenplay, I honestly wonder
if it actually alluded to the fact that there were going to be 3 minute
segments with Mexican Wedding Bands playing tunes you have never heard
of. Did it tell you that there would be stretches where you would be so
puzzled by the actions of the characters and shocked by the lack of
logic that you would want to walk out? Probably not.

And by the way, why wait for an ambulance, when you have a bus?

3/10

What was the point of hte note that she gave to the police officer? What was in the note? Why show him read it? Who killed the mother? Why was the mother important? Whose story do you believe in about the mother? Why does she decide to go to the balcony naked? What's the point of the final scene with her father? Why is the father's storyline even in the movie if its only connection is the fact that he gave someone the gun?

Either I'm dumb, or the point of the movie is miscommunication (with the audience as well).

It's a Japanese themed thing now with the letter. It wanted to copy the Lost in Translation scenario at the end. This movie is pointless from start to finish.

Yes, I agree. Crash is incredibly exploitive and just awful.

Oh, wait.

I liked Crash. Not enough to win Best Picture, but this is 100X worse.

I just find it kind of strange that you call this exploitive or suggest that all of this is utterly ridiculous, when Crash saw a cop assaulting a woman, and then saving her the next day from a car seconds away from exploding. How all the characters "Crash" into each other every ten minutes with some other far-fetched, exploitive "insight" into race relations. Babel is subtle. It makes its points through much more dignified means. It's simplistic and that's why it is successful. You are focusing on all the wrong parts of the film, imo.

Yup, Crash v. Babel, baby.

It's simplisitic and that is why it's successful? Bullshit!!! It isn't successful. The only reason this has anyone seeing it now is because it has been nominated for a bunch of undeserved awards. This film is one of the worst exhibitions of film making I have seen in quite sometime.

That's not really true, the majority of people are going to see it because it is a generally mature, thoughtful picture.

I wasn't completely wowed by Babel, but there were certain things about it that were just wonderful.

Most people saw it well before the Golden Globe nominations, but that's cool if you want to think people are liking it because "critics tell them to." I guess I could say that about Crash, too. About as valid.

SPOILERS: (do I need to say it, heh?)


1. The letter at the end is exactly like the final bit from Lost in Translation (another movie set in Japan!), I agree with baumer here. If you hate ambiguous endings, you'll hate this one for sure. I don't. I personally loved the fact that you couldn't figure what it said. Was it a suicide note? A love letter? Multiple theories here. I love when a movie doesn't have to explain every single detail to the audience and hit them with a brick. Afterall, to some people - like baumer - the movie already hit them enough in the head . The message is there. If you want to hear it, just listen.



2. You were searching for an ending similar to Crash with a song at the end to complement it? Sorry to disappoint, but this is the wrong movie.


3. Her mother did commit suicide...? And I believe she shot herself in the head, just like her father said to the cop, and she invented the other story. Why would she invent it, you'd ask? Well, what if she really was trying to commit suicide and the note was the suicide note? Think about it. Just one of many theories.


4. The final scene with her father???? Don't tell me you wanted to delete that too For me it's like deleting the family dinner at the end of A History of Violence Just look at the emotions displayed there. The emotional ambivalence of THAT particular moment! What ending would you want?



I guess the whole problem is the fact that you don't like ambiguous endings Caché I can completely understand Neo, but this one... not so much.

What would be your grade? I noticed you put Rinko Kikuchi in your best performances of the year...any other thoughts?

Missed this "review."

More thoughts!!!

B+

It was a very solid film, although I felt some of it could've been handled better (the chronology of the events and their relation to each other in that regard, for example). Rinko Kikuchi was outstanding, yes.

Crash had great WOM and legs.

Yep...and Babel has no legs and terrible wOM.

Money, after all, means everything.

I guess a shaky start with audiences and critics that led to seven Golden Globe nominations isn't indicative of praise or great WOM. Never mind the fact that only a fraction of Babel is in English.

..Terrible WOM of mouth that has led it to be the most nominated film at the most prestigious film awards that have announced at this point. That doesn't happen by accident.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

I liked it. Big deal?

If you can't love me for who I am....

I was so wrong for ever loving you.

A-

An outstanding film from start to finish, although there are a few aspects I didn't like. The order of events were a little confusing, but other than that it was a great film. The entire cast was excellent, especially the supporting females (Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza in particular). The score and cinematography were also excellent.

This is golden. I didn't hate the movie, but it was nowhere near the level of a 21 Grams. My biggest gripe was that none of these stories were that interesting and in the case of the nanny scenario, just terribly dull. The best part of the Morocco story was definitely the kids and their father, because whenever it cut back to Pitt and Blanchett it was the same shit over and over, stretched out in two minute segments across a two and a half hour film. These two are miscast and the Pitt oscar hype is truly puzzling. There is no character there, all he does is act angry and sad. And that piss-pan sequence has to be the most embarassing of the year. The Japanese thread has an interesting idea and the girl is very good, but it does become ridiculous and gets bogged down in its redundancy.

C

I'm glad someone else sees the Mexican story for what it is..just plain brutal and unnecessary.

D

Wow.

More thoughts later.

I think a "D" and then "WOW" is all you need to say.

A nasty little mess of a movie the japanese section isn't bad but the rest is mediocre filler. Oh look its Brad Pitt crying a lot thats clearly brilliant acting, oh and a little Morroccan boy jacking off how European of them. I really like the directors previous 2 efforts Amorres Perros and 21 Grams but this doesn't come close.

C (Only because of the decent Japanese section)