The Spoils of Babylon (2014)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Glad to see that Eric Jonrush's "The Spoils of Babylon" has finally gotten out to the wider public. Sure, it's been available for years on the collectors' circuit, on shabby VHS dubs from shady dealers at shadier fan conventions, but now, finally, it can be seen in its original fidelity and quality.Which really isn't that much better.There's a reason why certain projects get released, and others remain on the shelf, whether that shelf be in an air-conditioned film vault in a major movie studio or in a pawn shop. SOB is a case in point. And apparently, Eric Jonrush has reached that point; desperate, pining for former glories. A sad, obese old man draped in tent-like garb, swilling mid-priced wine and flirting with waitresses one-third his age. We see this much in the recorded introductions to the episodes of this mini-series.I actually had not ever bothered to track down any of those low fidelity bootleg tape versions, usually made from a single, unauthorized broadcast on an Indonesian cable channel in 1987. But, I must admit, I was curious.Though I had not read any of Jonrush's source novels, I had seen several of his potboiler films. Those were all much better than SOB.I frankly wallowed in the cheesiness of "The Barbarian Hordes," his Roman A Clef expose of his time working in the advertising industry on Madison Avenue, in retrospect an amazing precursor to "Mad Men." TBH had the distinct advantage of being written by a direct eyewitness, but the distinct disadvantage of being written without any talent. It's a nutty conflation of The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, Darren Stephens from Bewitched, and the worst parts of The Fountainhead, without any of Ayn Rand's subtlety. And, yes, lots of sex scenes thrown in.I stood in awe of his most widely seen film, "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," the sweeping, star-studded epic about the early days of the Hollywood studio system. Most famous for its bizarre casting of then current stars playing stars of the past. (Kate Jackson as Mary Pickford! Tom Selleck as Charlie Chaplin!) I spent weeks trying to puzzle out the complicated wonders of "The Aubergine Conundrum," his police/spy/detective/murder mystery/courtroom drama: equal parts Perry Mason, The Maltese Falcon, and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.But those productions had notable advantages over SOB: they were produced by major studios and had decent budgets behind them. Though SOB (the novel) did show up on the bestseller lists, it wasn't the kind of runaway hit that has Hollywood beating down a writer's door. And with only three television networks at that time, the available slots filled up fast, especially for tent-pole productions like sweeping, multi-part epics.Jonrush, seething to get SOB made, could not take the rejection and put up his own money to complete the production. His caviar tastes and baloney budget forced him to cast little known actors, including his then-wife, Laureigha Samcake, and low profile soap opera hunk Dirk Snowfield. Samcake is way out of her depth, but she tries her best. She's even out-acted by the mannequin playing Lady Anne. Yes, in one case, Jonrush's limited budget meant that for one role, he could not afford to hire an actress, only a voice over artist. Only Samcake's endless fashion parade of ever-changing wigs keeps her afloat. Snowfield is not much better, with his accent that wanders more than Jack Kerouac and his Bob Dylan hairpiece. The decision to use scale models for sets rather than stock footage is a curious one, especially when it is discovered that a crew of Old World craftsmen was flown in especially from Switzerland to construct each model by hand out of thousands of matchsticks, which Jonrush paid for in Krugerands.Believe it or not, the writing is actually the least awful thing about SOB. After a while I started getting into the story and the relationships between the characters. Would Devin wrest control of Morehouse Conglomerated from Cynthia? Would that little twerp Winston get what was coming to him? So many questions, and so little wine to find the answers.Why doesn't anyone try to film romance novels anymore? Here you have the response to that query, in full color. Advisable for Jonrush completists only.

Eric Jonrosh's (Will Ferrell) The Spoils of Babylon is the definition of quality spoofing. The campy storyline set to make fun of soap operas and bad book-to-movie adaptions just makes it all the more enjoyable. This miniseries is off the norm, like I expected due to the other series made on IFC. It takes all guidelines for filming a TV show, throws it out the window, burns it, compacts it to ash, and then resurrect their own rules from those ashes. The Spoils of Babylon takes all those hilarious things from SNL and transforms it into a full length TV show. Will Ferrell plays a fantastic burnout Author by the name of Eric Jonrosh, while Kristin Wiig plays her funniest role yet as Cynthia Morehouse, and Toby Maguire plays the oblivious and outrageous Devon Morehouse. The smart witty dialogue and the effects that are supposed to make you groan, all work together to make the best parody show in the last few years.

"The Spoils of Babylon" plays nicely off the sweeping tropes of sweeping television dramas of the sweeping past, mostly relying on silliness and the absurd--and, it has to be said, UK spoof series "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace". This is crystal clear from the episode introductions, supposedly looking back on one artist's tragically lost TV masterpiece, and from the low-budget opening title sequence and home-made establishing shots, which call to mind the "striking" approach to the obviously cardboard Darkplace Hospital.There are some wobbles to the concept here. While Darkplace maintained the trappings of a pitiful budget throughout, Spoils enjoys some stunning location shoots that don't quite make sense beside money-saving scale-model inserts. There is a similar competence on the part of the imaginary actors, who rarely chew the scenery quite as much as they might, whereas Garth's collection of pals were every bit as terrible as the show he built around them. However, the basic parody of the genre works and raises at least a smile along the way.

Having watched 3 episodes already, I find myself anxious to see the next one. That doesn't happen very often in TV comedy, so they must be doing something right.Although the production could not be referred to as "subtle", there are a lot of little touches that you really need to look for. I find it best if I record the show so that I can go back and look at the little details, like changes in the background that might otherwise go un-noticed. It's sort of like the throwaways on "The Simpsons" where they pan through the house and you see skeletons in the walls - but you almost have to put the show into slo-mo to see these bits.Spoils is like a show with a really pathetic continuity person, so that a beer bottle in one scene gets replaced by a glass of scotch in the next, and then morphs into a bottle of Coke. IMDb should cut off the "Goofs" category for this show, as there are so many intentional errors in it.And I have suffered through melodramas like the one parodied here, which makes the satire just that much more biting. The comparisons to Police Squad and Airplane! are probably apt - I think that if you liked either of these, you'll enjoy Spoils.