La La Land was about people who take their art seriously. Babylon is about people who don’t. And while Hollywood might always have had more of the latter, Babylon fails because A) people who take their art seriously are a lot more interesting than people who are just screwing around and B) Chazelle doesn’t seem to have much to say about these people to convince us otherwise and C) he chose to say not very much through Brad Pitt. I thought Babylon might have fallen victim to the absurd critical backlash against La La Land. Nope. It really is as thorough a waste of three hours as you can find on streaming. If every director is entitled to one really bad movie, Chazelle is on the scoreboard. (Paramount+)
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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