New Jack Black and Kevin Hart film debuts with rare 0% Rotten Tomatoes score

Stephen Porzio

Despite a stacked cast – featuring two Oscar-winners – critics have not been kind to the sci-fi action comedy.

The big screen adaptation of the popular video game series Borderlands has landed with a critical thud, debuting with a rare 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Helmed by director Eli Roth (last year’s excellent slasher Thanksgiving), the action-adventure-comedy follows Lilith (two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine), an infamous treasure hunter with a mysterious past.

This is as she reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramírez, American Crime Story), the universe’s most powerful business titan.

In her quest, Lilith winds up forming an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits.

These are Roland (Kevin Hart, Jumanji), once a highly respected soldier, but now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, Barbie), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Florian Munteanu, Shang-Chi), Tina’s musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween), the scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap (Jack Black, School of Rock), a persistently wiseass robot.

“These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands ― but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other,” the plot synopsis reads.

Also featuring amongst its cast Bobby Lee (Pineapple Express), Gina Gershon (Bound) and Haley Bennett (The Magnificent Seven), the movie version of Borderlands boasts a lot of talent both onscreen and off.

That being said, the film’s delayed release (the movie started filming in April 2021), the reports of reshoots and the fact that movie earned a 12A rating despite the video games it is based on being known for their crude humour and extreme violence led many fans of the games to be worried about the adaptation.

And based on the early reviews, those fears were well-founded.

The movie debuted on critical aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes with a 0% score based on 24 reviews – this means not one of those reviews was positive – before later jumping to a still lowly 4%.

Based on these write-ups, the general criticism seems to be the sanding off of the game’s edgy elements for the film in an effort to appeal to a wider audience.

Some critics, however, singled out Blanchett’s lead turn for praise.

You can read a sample of some of those negative reviews below:

Hollywood Reporter: “Since the characters remain one-dimensional — not much more than cartoonish gamer avatars — we’re never terribly invested in their survival, or their quest to get to the vault first.”

Independent (UK): “Borderlands is a disaster. And while it might not singlehandedly undo the goodwill built up around recent video game adaptations – specifically television’s The Last of Us and Fallout – it’s dragged us back to a time when studios used to make these with all the grace and acuity of a drunk person attempting to place a 3am chicken nugget order.”

London Evening Standard: “Is Borderlands the worst film of the year? It’s definitely in contention — so laughably bad, in fact, that it feels like being catapulted back to a time when video game adaptations were a byword for mediocrity.”

Screen International: “In her chameleonic career, Cate Blanchett has donned many guises — but never before has she had the chance to be a gun-toting, ass-kicking action star. Sadly, Borderlands is an unworthy vehicle for her swaggering performance.”

Borderlands is out in cinemas now.

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