Margo Robbie | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

To review a 3-hour and 9-minute pile of all-time movie garbage like “Babylon”, I thought I would take a new perspective of some random person thinking of seeing this waste of film and talking to someone who had just seen this monstrosity.

So is this movie any good? No. What is it about? I really don’t know, it’s just a series of mostly disconnected scenes. Some scenes with people making movies, and several wild dancing scenes at two parties. So how did this film start? Well, there was this elephant and a man with a truck who thought he was picking up a horse. So they tried to bring this huge elephant up a mountain using another truck to help tow and the tow failed. So what did they do? Two men actually got behind the elephant and tried to stop the truck from falling down the mountainous road, even though the elephant probably weighed 3 tons. Then what? Well, the elephant defecates all over the entire face and body of some poor immigrant. You’re kidding? I wish I was and that was only the beginning of this disgusting movie. As far as the elephant we never find out how they prevented this poor animal from falling to its death, but they do show the animal later in the movie unharmed.

Then a few minutes later at some lavish over the top party, there is a hooker who stands over the huge stomach of a fat man and urinates all over him. Really? Yes really. Some minutes later there is a midget who is riding a – rubber-pogo-stick-penis. A rubber-pogo-stick-penis? I could not believe it either. Then the penis ejaculates all over the crowd of people. Is this a triple-x porn movie? Not as far as I know. But it sure is one of the most disgusting and bad movies I have ever seen. Later in the film, Margo Robbie throws food all over herself and a crowd of people then leaves the house, then comes back in the house and projectile vomits all over an expensive carpet and then continues to vomit all over a bald fat man. The tell-tale sign of a very bad movie, the horrendous vomit scene. That is for sure. There is a huge muscular man who eats a live rat, later in the movie. A live rat? Yes, a live rat. There is also an alligator and Margo Robbie gets bitten in the neck by a snake. Does she die? No, this Chinese woman sucks the poison out of her neck. Sounds like a high point? It just might be considering how horrible this mess is. The ending was very strange, showing excerpts of other movies and some weird graphical images? Why did they show that? I have no idea. All I know is that I wasted over 3 hours of my life, wondering how or why this level of crap was ever made and somehow got Margo Robbie and Brad Pitt to star in this horrific mess.

We all know that the year 2022 is one of the worst years for the stock market, almost as bad as 2008. This has been a direct result of the fake stimulus thrown at the market starting in March 2020 because of the Pandemic. Unfortunately, this is the first time in movie history that in one year, two grotesque movies, this one and “Everything Everywhere all at Once” have been released and given any positive reviews. In fact, Babylon and Everything both have received 6 Golden Globe nominations, even though both movies are piles of disconnected garbage. What is going on here? Has everyone gone crazy? None of this makes any sense, and for all movie fans around the world, we can only hope that this is not some kind of new strange insane trend, where making insane crap is considered good only because it is so different. Next are the Academy Award nominations and we can only hope for sanity to return.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this waste of 3 hours are an understandable, but innacurate 55%, with my rating 5% and a resounding miss this horrible film at all costs.

So how does a movie disaster like “Amsterdam” happen? For those of us on the outside looking in, we can only speculate.

David O. Russell has written and directed several great movies, including “Joy” – 2015 (outstanding), “Silver Linings Playbook” – 2012 (outstanding), and “American Hustle” – 2013 (good). Writing a screenplay can take a very long time, especially if the writer is a perfectionist – which is probably the case with Russell.

So what does a highly respected screenwriter do, after so much hard work, and writing for so long, when he/she realizes that they created a bad screenplay? After all of that time and effort very often a screenplay can still eventually result in a garbage end result – which is why screenwriting is such a difficult art form. So then how do you rationalize and justify so much time and hard work wasted and still make a movie that is bad? The only solution is to use your clout as a writer/director to call in favors from all of your friends to rescue what is a very bad script and ultimately a very bad movie. The thinking here is, let’s invite “ALL” of the most famous actors in Hollywood – to hopefully offset the inevitable bad reviews that will come out. Just maybe this strategy will rescue the box office, especially if you have Robert De Niro in this movie with a small part. De Niro agreed to make this movie because he was a major part of Silver Linings Playbook and Joy, which are two outstanding David O Russel films. De Niro respects and likes David O. Russel, so even after reading a very bad script, he agreed to make this bad movie, to help his friend. The other rationalization for the other actors is to do a favor for Russell, so maybe in the future, you would be considered for another major project.

Amsterdam is about 3 friends who meet during World War I and then become suspects in a murder in 1933. The story is told with disjointed flashbacks that start in 1933, then go back to World War I, and then back again to 1933. De Niro plays a politician who appears mostly at the end of this confusing disaster of a story. Not only is this mess boring and slow, it mostly is too convoluted, with too many characters, and too many sub-stories, resulting in a payoff that mostly makes no sense. After sitting through 2 hours of this, most of the audience is too deep in a coma to even care how all of this garbage turns out.

The list of big-name actors in this film is very long, including Taylor Swift, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Anya Taylor-Joy, Margot Robbie, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Mike Myers, John David Washington and Christian Bale. This is probably the longest list of currently relevant actors appearing in the same movie – in many years. Unfortunately, all of these highly skilled actors will never be able to rescue any screenplay this bad.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this waste of two hours is a correct 33%, with my rating at 20% mainly because this was all so hard to sit through. Run from this bad movie experience which is a nightmare to watch.