Tyler Whitmore’s review published on Letterboxd:
My fiancée Riley is in her gaming era right now, but she has been obsessing over video games that have movie or TV IP behind them. After watching the Fallout series, she jumped in head first and beat Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 with ease and is now deep into Fallout 76. After becoming a huge fan of the Harry Potter movies recently, she jumped in and beat Hogwarts: Legacy in a flash. I had high hopes Borderlands could be the next movie-watch-turned-gaming-binge for her, but after this mess of a film there is no shot.
Now it's definitely not the worst movie I have seen this year. The action is shot mostly well (the camera was moving at least!), but the story is where this thing suffers big time. This feels like every other film franchise was stuffed in a blender and chopped up until they could take the worst elements of each one (maybe that is what the games are too, I have no clue).
The cast is a mess. Yeah, Cate Blanchett is a superstar but put anyone next to Kevin Hart and it's going to be wasted talent. Ariana Greenblatt is serviceable and Jamie Lee Curtis is Jamie Lee Curtis (derogatory). Eli Roth is a talented enough filmmaker that if this story was able to decide what it wanted to be then it could have been something special. The cast members perfectly symbolized this movie - torn between wanting to be silly and fun or competent and impactful. It is always a delicate balance to make something silly while still being engaging and intriguing and Borderlands failed that in every which way.
I hope everyone involved got a bag because the film financiers surely aren't!
2024 Ranked
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