BORDERLANDS

BORDERLANDS

Directed by Eli Roth

Sitting on the shelf collecting dust for 3+ years and only finally released after extensive reshoots and rewrites, we have BORDERLANDS. The latest summer dud and yet another in the long long LONG line of absolute garbage video game into movie adaptations.

Based on what I assume to be a very popular game of the same name, the film stars a terribly miscast Cate Blanchett (sporting red hair and a just godawful American accent) as a bounty hunter in space from the planet Pandora (kill me already). She joins a ragtag team as they work together to find some vault supposedly filled with ancient alien technology (exhausting).

Nearly everyone is miscast and the film never settles on a proper tone. Could it be all the reshoots they had to do years later to try and salvage this? Could it be why the original writer Craig Mazin had his name removed from the credits? You know it's not a good sign when the behind the scenes shenanigans are far more interesting than what's on screen. We have Kevin Hart looking bored and miserable, Jamie Lee Curtis giving a performance that's just begging to be stripped of her Oscar and Jack Black voicing a robot for "comedic relief" but someone forgot to give him, you know, some actual jokes. The only people here really giving us what the movie is asking for is Ariana Greenblatt as a spunky teen with a penchant for explosives and her muscle bound masked protector played by Florian Munteanu (you never see his face yet its one of the best performances).

Yeah it's colorful with *some* fun action and clearly going for a GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY type magic. This is a massive failure and Eli Roth should stick to his cheap horror schlock. More like BOREDerlands amirite?

⭐/4