movie review: babel

i saw the movie babel yesterday, or rather i DEMANDED it from movies on DEMAND. the cable box provided the film immediately; i see why you have to speak to them firmly, though, and be insistent.

babel was very confusing. the best i can figure, it was about how brad pitt and kate winslett went around to a lot of poor areas and adopted as many kids as they could carry. first, they went to arabia and adopted these two little goat herders, and then they went to mexico and took two tow-headed children from a chicken farm. then somehow they also adopted the leader of a band of deaf japanese sporting types, although she wound up being an adopted kid more in the "soon-yi previn" sense than in the "oliver twist" sense.

meanwhile, there were a lot of villians who were trying to disrupt this happy family. the japanese secret police kept hounding the birth father of the deaf girl, possibly because he kept trying to reclaim her as his own. then, the border patrol chased two of the children through the desert and made their caregiver, esmerelda, dance a forbidden dance in her red dress. things got even worse when one of the adopted kids shot his new mom, probably because it was a custom in his home country. this made brad pitt VERY upset, so he punched a tourist and then, in the film's only real action sequence, jumped on a helicopter and flew it into a military base. that was cool.

overall, i'd say the point of the movie is that you should adopt as many kids as possible, and learn to speak a lot of languages. but you have to watch the kids you adopt, because sometimes they get naked and sometimes they shoot you. i wasn't counting when i watched (DEMANDED!) it, so i'll give it an 8 out of 10, where 1 is really crappy and 10 is the best movie ever.