As someone who has never played a single second of a Borderlands video game, I approached this film with as open a mind as possible. Now, video game adaptations are notorious for being awful - only a few coming to memory for being good at the very least. Borderlands sees Eli Roth challenged with bringing the game to the big screen and it results in one of the worst films of the year.
Lilith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe's most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Edgar Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team — Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a feral teenage demolitionist; Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Jack Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands but they'll be fighting for something more: each other.
Not only is Borderlands one of the year's worst films, it's the most annoying ninety-minutes you could sit through all year. Honestly, there's literally nothing here to shout about - mainly because the film is literally just noise for its entire runtime. It's a basic plot that has been done a million times before, and definitely better in most cases. It's hard to not compare this to something like Guardians of the Galaxy, a film that Roth clearly tries to emulate and fails. It's missing the heart that made that film so special and the characters are all so bloody unlikeable. Why should we care about any of them when Roth's handling of the story shows he clearly doesn't!?
There's a chance for Borderlands to have some really cool actions sequences infused with some comedy, Roth instead opting to deliver such a tame experience for the audience. The action is totally forgettable and the jokes - if you can hear any of them amidst all the noise - are quite dreadful.
This might also be the most blatant case of big name, and very capable, actors phoning it in for a bag of money. You've got Cate Blanchett leading the ensemble with an utterly lifeless performance delivered in a monotone voice that screams boredom, Kevin Hart not at all convincing as an elite mercenary, Jamie Lee Curtis doing that quirky thing again which isn't as charming this time around, and Florian Munteanu just inaudibly screaming nonsense throughout. At least Ariana Greenblatt tries to inject some personality into proceedings but the damage is already done around her to salvage anything. Jack Black even feels like inspired casting to voice Claptrap but even the novelty of that wears off and left me wishing someone would put them out of their misery in the vast wasteland.
It's not even worth getting mad over how bad Borderlands is because I don't have any relationship with the game. In a world where something as good as Fallout released this year, this feels like it sets video game adaptations back a bit.
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