Writer-director Eli Roth’s handling of Borderlands is so atrocious it should be studied in film schools to teach aspiring filmmakers what not to do.

It’s astounding how Roth (Death Wish, Cabin Fever, Hostel) manages to get everything wrong in a way that’s typical of student filmmakers their first few times out, when they don’t yet know how to focus viewer attention.

To start with, his script is a mass of dull sci-fi adventure cliches. Then, the camera placement is always off — too close, too far away, somehow angled wrong so that you always feel you’re missing the clearly intended emotional gist of every shot and scene. Comic punch lines are stepped on by other business. If there’s a dramatic moment that’s supposed to be poignant, it falls flat, not only because the scene is written in such a trite way there’s no charge left in it, but also because you’ve gotten distracted again by some random visual element like Cate Blanchett’s stupid hair, a stiff orange side-sweep that’s supposed to be wildly punked out but just looks uncomfortable and silly.

The gun battles and chase scenes are retreads of a thousand action movies past. The CGI backdrops are paralyzing in their dullness.

The movie is based on the same-named video game, and it’s so bad that you immediately wonder why Blanchett, an excellent actor and a genuine film star, is debasing herself in this thing. If you google, “Why is Cate Blanchett in Borderlands?”, several sites come up immediately featuring interviews with Blanchett in which she’s asked repeated versions of that question. Her main answer tends to be that she likes to take on unexpected roles and in addition to that, she was suffering from mentally overwrought desperation when she signed on to Borderlands:

I think there also may have been a little COVID madness — I was spending a lot of time in the garden, using the chainsaw a little too freely. My husband said, “This film could save your life.”

Blanchett has also worked with Roth before, starring along with Jack Black in the children’s fantasy The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018), so it seems she’s not repulsed by the Roth factor.

In this case, it’s unfortunate for Blanchett that she is so riveting onscreen, because if you watch Borderlands you’re going to be focused on her, and that means she’s carrying this whole stupid mess singlehandedly. You’re certainly not going to be focused on Kevin Hart, who at first seems to be playing the central heroic role as a mercenary soldier gone rogue named Roland. After dominating the opening sequence, when he’s apparently abducting the daffy, explosives-loving Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from a locked-down facility he’d been assigned to guard, Hart spends a ton of time off-screen, as if he’d been written or edited out of several sequences.

Blanchett quickly takes over as the badass bounty hunter Lilith. She gets hired by powerful corporate bastard Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to recover his daughter Tiny Tina from Roland. To accomplish her lucrative mission, Lilith must return to Pandora, the trashed home planet of her traumatic youth.

Lilith quickly discovers that Tina is actually a runaway trying to escape Atlas, who plans to use her as the final key needed to open a legendary Vault on Pandora, which is rumored to contain all the lost technology of the advanced race of Eridians that once lived there.

Switching sides in order to save Tina, Lilith teams up with one of those motley crews that have become so played out in this type of movie. It includes Roland and the muscle-bound psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu) who dedicates himself to guarding Tiny Tina and shares her love of mayhem. There’s also Tina’s foster mother, scientist Dr Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the small triangular robot, Claptrap (voice of Jack Black), who’s been mysteriously programmed to aid Lilith in her mission.

The Claptrap character is presumably meant to be a comic reversal of Artoo Detoo in Star Wars. Instead of a valued member of the team, he’s constantly belittled and forgotten and used for target practice, and instead of winsome beeps and boops, he keeps up a nonstop patter of sarcastic complaints about Lilith’s tough, trigger-happy character and her dismissive treatment of him. None of this wall-to-wall commentary is funny. Because I can remember when Jack Black was very funny — it was a while back — I found this to be more striking than younger audience members might.

But what am I saying? There aren’t going to be any younger audience members, because Borderlands is bombing hard at the box office.

Though it’s difficult to place bets on what the public’s going to embrace these days. Opening at the same time as Borderlands, that god-awful looking soap opera It Ends With Us, based on the best-selling book by Colleen Hoover and starring Blake Lively, is about a woman torn between two lovers, one abusive, and it’s packing theaters all over the country. I’d have run a mile in tight shoes to avoid that one.

August is turning out to be the cruelest month, if you’re evaluating months according to the quality of movie releases. Woof!