For those who think Hollywood has become a cocaine-and-orgy-fueled cesspool that churns out nothing but garbage, "Babylon" is here to assure you: It was always thus.
Set between 1926 and 1952, Damien Chazelle's psychedelic drama plays out like "Baz Luhrmann's Singin' in the Rain": three loud, lurid, jump-cutty hours in which the movie biz transitions from silent films to talkies to confusion about what audiences want, with random naked people standing in the background of most scenes. The other comparison to a better movie would be "Boogie Nights," which was about the transition from filmed to video porn. "Babylon" pays homage to it in a garish sequence with Tobey Maguire that is meant to recall Mark Wahlberg's nightmarish trip to a drug house while "Sister Christian" blared.
Chazelle isn't as skilled a director as Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights") is, and his film never achieves the sense that the tiny lives we're watching stand in for bigger social concerns. Chazelle's main characters are Margot Robbie as crass starlet Nellie, Brad Pitt as a Douglas Fairbanks-like silent movie hero named Jack and Diego Calva as Manny, who wanders onto a backlot and vows to do whatever it takes to make it in the movies.
