Falsely dubbed as a female empowerment saga about a powerful woman who takes control of her sexuality, “Babygirl” falls completely flat. It sucked so much, I don’t even know where to begin.
First of all, there was no chemistry between Nicole Kidman‘s Romy and Harrison Dickson‘s Samuel. So the whole movie didn’t work. Samuel was not at all attractive and his sex talk was juvenile and amateur. “Get on your knees!” — really?? My whole audience burst into laughter. All of the sex scenes were cringe-worthy and not hot at all. I can tell that director Halina Rejin has never had great sex. Because she was unable to recreate it on the screen. Girl, call me next time you need to write a sex scene. I can help you out! During the media blitz for this hot mess, Kidman claimed she was having orgasms on set. Sounds like she also hasn’t had any good sex in life.
Secondly, because Romy was completely unlikeable, you just didn’t care about her. As a Black woman, I took special offense to her hypocritical actions towards Samuel’s black girlfriend. And if the roles were swapped and this was a man messing around with a young female intern, the #MeToo brigade would be up in arms. Yet we are supposed to accept this unacceptable work behavior because it is a woman? Nah. Sleeping with interns is a bad exploitative move whether the CEO is male or female.
Thirdly, Samuel was much less attractive than Romy’s husband played by Antonio Banderas. It was hard to believe that Romy would risk her marriage for him.
And finally, in attempting to create a film about female empowerment, Halina has done the opposite. Having Samuel tell Romy that “I tell you what to do ” and that “I have power over you because I can make one call and she you everything” is not exactly her empowered. It is, in fact, the opposite. She is basically his plaything and under HIS control.
There is nothing erotic or thrilling about this dreck. The subject matter of being bored in a marriage and seeking sexual freedom has been explored in much more interesting and sexy ways before. “Sex/Life” from Netflix instantly comes to mind. Don’t waste your time with this mess and binge watch that instead.
