BORDERLANDS

From director Eli Roth comes the live-action adaptation of the popular video game that features a star-studded cast (Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, and Edgar Ramírez). The premise is Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) is missing and her wealthy father Atlas (Ramirez) hires Lilith (Blanchett) to find her along with some alien technology that was last seen on the planet Tiny Tina was also last seen. Once on the planet, Lilith slowly and at times, unwillingly, grows her group of friends to bring Tiny Tina back to her father to claim her reward. Having never played the video game, I didn't have a horse in this race. And a lot of the early negative feedback did give me pause before stepping into the theater. And while it's not a great movie, it's certainly not a train wreck that some have made it out to be either. This isn't a great film and judging by the early reactions, probably won't become the franchise Lionsgate was hoping it would become. In saying that, it's a decent B-popcorn flick that doesn't take itself too seriously, is funny and fun, and keeps the story moving along. I'm not sure what others were expecting when viewing this but it's far from a bad movie. 5.5/10