Big fun dump on Tinseltown

• Published date: 21 January 2023

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Max Minghella, Tobey Maguire, Flea, Olivia Wilde

Rating: (R18) ★★

There has been no shortage of Oscar-winning directors putting out ‘‘love letters to cinema’’ this awards season, but only one opens with an elephant defecating straight into the camera, which is as good a metaphor as any for how I felt about Damian Chazelle’s epic three-hour tale of bacchanalian excess in 1920s Hollywood.

Babylon (Rialto, Reading) wants so very much to be this year’s Boogie Nights that PTA could almost sue for plagiarism, starting off by introducing the key caricatures, I mean characters, at a hedonistic, drug-fuelled party where seemingly everyone in the business is engaged in some form of orgiastic debauchery.

Sure, it looks like a lot of fun, but after 40 minutes I was wondering when the story was going to...