Borderlands review: Not even Jack Black and Cate Blanchett can save this

We review the big screen videogame adaptation of Borderlands…

Borderlands

Leaping to bring a video game from the home screen into the big-screen environment has been attempted by many but few have succeeded and “survived” to tell the tale. Like completing the games themselves, it is an enormous task that will take hundreds of hours and dedication to even scratch the surface. In recent years, the small screen has presented the perfect avenue for adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout, while Sonic The Hedgehog has become a trilogy of films, fuelled by its effervescent style and some classic Jim Carrey comedy. But for every hit, there are five misfires and there’s no delight in saying that Borderlands, the latest from director Eli Roth, sadly fits very comfortably in the latter category.

Our story begins with a voiceover from Lilith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous outlaw, gunslinger, and bounty hunter who becomes embroiled in a battle for control across the many lands of the galaxy, not least her home planet of Pandora (a different one) where she is drawn back after taking on her latest assignment. She’s tasked with bringing home the daughter of Atlas, the universe’s monolithic overlord (or something like that) to find his missing daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who may or may not have an untapped power to change the world. Once there, she is forced to team up with former mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart); robot and comic relief Claptrap (voiced effervescently by Jack Black); Krieg (Florian Munteanu), her Bane-like protector; and Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is one egg short of a basket.

In a similar vein to previous adaptations that had gone before, there were almost immediately fan grumblings on the announcement of the film about the direction – in this case, literally – it was heading and what would form its basis. When Eli Roth, of Hostel, The Green Inferno, and last year’s Thanksgiving, was announced as director of the film, it seemed entirely plausible on paper that the harder edges of the video games – their violence, bloodshed, and chaotic, dizzying gameplay – may be well suited to his style of direction.

Indeed, he contributed to the film’s script as well in the hope that the marriage of the two entities would be able to harness the uniqueness of the games into a satisfying adaptation. Sadly, while it makes strides in trying to match the game’s originality and anarchic style, it forgets about all the basics and fails almost entirely in every department. No amount of Jack Black energy and Cate Blanchett class can make up for an unimaginative and uninspired screenplay that thinks it’s funny when it is bland and lifeless, dour set-pieces, and some atrocious CGI that feels – and looks – unfinished.

Tonally and narratively threadbare and cliched to within an inch of its life, it loses any sense of fun within its opening act and continues to stumble more and more quickly before its stale and underwhelming finale. Blanchett has said the gun-slinging elements and a “little COVID madness” were what drew her to playing Lilith, but even her brilliance can only salvage so much and she, like Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Black, and Edgar Ramirez, who ties Tahir Rahim’s Madame Web bad guy for the worst/ most pointless villain of the year here, gets lost in the mess that transpires with none of them able to rescue it or themselves from the turgidness that surrounds them in these borderlands.

And speaking of Madame Web, an interesting side note: the producers of that and Morbius are behind this one as well. Similarly to those monstrosities, Borderlands, too, went through extensive delays and reshoots and the results of those are evident through most of the film here – poorly conceived and executed almost as badly.

Even the most ardent, die-hard game enthusiasts will find this one hard to forgive. And they have forgiven a lot over the years.

Borderlands will be released in cinemas on 9 August