Borderlands

I have never played the game but I thought the trailer for Borderlands looked like a lot of fun and I am a big fan of Cate Blanchett so I went to see it last night.  It is not quite as bad as all of the reviews have made it out to be but it is not good.  Roland (Kevin Hart), a mercenary gone rogue, kidnaps Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), along with her protector Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and takes her to the planet Pandora because he believes that she is Eridian and can open a vault containing vast amounts of treasure and technology left behind by the ancient civilization.  Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) hires the notorious bounty hunter Lileth (Blanchett) to retrieve Tina which forces her to return to her home planet for the first time after fleeing as a child.  She locates Tina with the help of the robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) but she soon joins forces with Roland, Tina, and Krieg when she realizes why Atlas wants the technology.  They enlist the help of Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), an Eridian specialist, to find a series of keys so they can open the vault before Atlas.  Mayhem ensues.  I actually enjoyed the story, even though I was confused a few times and I guessed a big plot twist during the opening voiceover narration, and I was invested in the relationship between Lileth and Tina.  However, I did find the resolution to be incredibly anticlimactic because the vault is almost meaningless.  There are non-stop action sequences but they are very chaotic and it is often difficult to see who is fighting whom and the CGI is a mess.  Both Blanchett (I am sorry to say) and Curtis are surprisingly bland but I was most disappointed by Hart and Black, who can usually be relied upon to provide some fun comic relief, because they are not even a little bit funny (I laughed exactly once during the entire runtime).  Greenblatt is the only one who brings any energy to her role.  It is not the worst movie I have seen this year but it is definitely one you can wait to see when it streams.