Dear Cate Blanchett,

Cate. Can I call you Cate? I just saw your latest movie, Borderlandbased on the video game series of the same name produced by Gearbox, and I just felt like I should ask…

Are you all right?

I ask because I’m worried after watching the film. You looked exhausted throughout production. Not in that insulting condescending way that lousy colleagues say to you, “oh, you look tired,” but more in that existential, where-did-I-go-wrong sense. Like you’d been walking barefoot in the garden and stepped in dog poop covered in thumbtacks and had to limp all the way back. I guess I can’t blame you – you had fun with genre films like the Lord of the rings Films and Thor: RagnarokAnd Borderland The film is directed by Eli Roth, a controversial if not popular director.

But Cate. There was so much wrong. Didn’t you get a script beforehand? Was is there a script? Because it felt like they just wrote the plot of the Borderlands 2 (group of misfits searching for a magical, unopenable safe on the planet Pandora, using a bunch of crazy weapons, an ally who is actually the villain’s daughter, etc.) and ripped out a few pages and then had a room full of monkeys write the replacement pages. So instead of one of the best, most charismatic video game villains of all time (Handsome Jack), we got a terribly boring performance by Edgar Ramirez as Atlas, the head of a weapons conglomerate. And instead of Angel, a mysterious voice who leads us to the vault, we get Ariana Greenblatt as Tina, a character who, while super funny in the games, is not anyone’s famous daughter and certainly not the bizarre clone-selected red herring that the movie has. And sure, Florian Munteanu was great as the younger Drago in Creed 2but here he is just a body behind a mask with dialogue that is not nearly as entertaining as that of his character Krieg in the game.

Jamie Lee Curtis is in it! Was that part of the attraction? Because honestly, she seems to be the only one trying, albeit not very much. I mean, I’d love to say that Kevin Hart (who is completely miscast as the stern and capable Roland) tries, but does he? It feels like he’s imitating Kevin Hart everywhere, the way Jack Black imitates Jack Black everywhere as the voice of the robot Claptrap. In Black’s defense, he’s probably the highlight of the film. In Hart’s defense… I have nothing.

Cate, my love, you know we adore you and would forgive you for many things. But this pill is much more bitter. The story is a Mixed upCate, so bad and so boring that even great special effects couldn’t save it. Not that that’s a problem, because the choppy, poorly edited, poorly visualized effects look like someone dumped paint in a junkyard and fed the footage through an Apple iE. Not to mention boring. My God, Cate, the action is so boring. What happened? Did you say to Eli at some point, “Hey, maybe let’s make it look like we’re not in these gunfights right after a good nap?” You have clout, Ms. Blanchett! Use it to make lemonade out of this bucket of stinking lemons. Even the soundtrack – a highlight of the games – was dreary and forgettable. You somehow managed to make Chaka Khan boring, Cate! How? HOW?!

Borderland is dying a less than slow death at the box office, and while I hate to see you fail, none of us are surprised, are we? You must have known soon after its release that this thing was going to flop at the box office. Video games are hard enough to adapt as it is! But this isn’t just a bad video game adaptation. It’s a bad movie, period. I don’t know of any director alive who could have salvaged this fetid ode to bad dialogue, pacing, and action. Please understand that all of this is done out of love, Cate. We hate to see those we love in such a mess. But there is one positive note I want to leave you with, one small glimmer of hope in this otherwise hopeless morass of shit.

At least it is better than Madame Web.