This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Glad to see that Eric Jonrush's "The Spoils of Babylon" has finally gotten out to the wider public. Sure, it's been available for years on the collectors' circuit, on shabby VHS dubs from shady dealers at shadier fan conventions, but now, finally, it can be seen in its original fidelity and quality.Which really isn't that much better.There's a reason why certain projects get released, and others remain on the shelf, whether that shelf be in an air-conditioned film vault in a major movie studio or in a pawn shop. SOB is a case in point. And apparently, Eric Jonrush has reached that point; desperate, pining for former glories. A sad, obese old man draped in tent-like garb, swilling mid-priced wine and flirting with waitresses one-third his age. We see this much in the recorded introductions to the episodes of this mini-series.I actually had not ever bothered to track down any of those low fidelity bootleg tape versions, usually made from a single, unauthorized broadcast on an Indonesian cable channel in 1987. But, I must admit, I was curious.Though I had not read any of Jonrush's source novels, I had seen several of his potboiler films. Those were all much better than SOB.I frankly wallowed in the cheesiness of "The Barbarian Hordes," his Roman A Clef expose of his time working in the advertising industry on Madison Avenue, in retrospect an amazing precursor to "Mad Men." TBH had the distinct advantage of being written by a direct eyewitness, but the distinct disadvantage of being written without any talent. It's a nutty conflation of The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, Darren Stephens from Bewitched, and the worst parts of The Fountainhead, without any of Ayn Rand's subtlety. And, yes, lots of sex scenes thrown in.I stood in awe of his most widely seen film, "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," the sweeping, star-studded epic about the early days of the Hollywood studio system. Most famous for its bizarre casting of then current stars playing stars of the past. (Kate Jackson as Mary Pickford! Tom Selleck as Charlie Chaplin!) I spent weeks trying to puzzle out the complicated wonders of "The Aubergine Conundrum," his police/spy/detective/murder mystery/courtroom drama: equal parts Perry Mason, The Maltese Falcon, and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.But those productions had notable advantages over SOB: they were produced by major studios and had decent budgets behind them. Though SOB (the novel) did show up on the bestseller lists, it wasn't the kind of runaway hit that has Hollywood beating down a writer's door. And with only three television networks at that time, the available slots filled up fast, especially for tent-pole productions like sweeping, multi-part epics.Jonrush, seething to get SOB made, could not take the rejection and put up his own money to complete the production. His caviar tastes and baloney budget forced him to cast little known actors, including his then-wife, Laureigha Samcake, and low profile soap opera hunk Dirk Snowfield. Samcake is way out of her depth, but she tries her best. She's even out-acted by the mannequin playing Lady Anne. Yes, in one case, Jonrush's limited budget meant that for one role, he could not afford to hire an actress, only a voice over artist. Only Samcake's endless fashion parade of ever-changing wigs keeps her afloat. Snowfield is not much better, with his accent that wanders more than Jack Kerouac and his Bob Dylan hairpiece. The decision to use scale models for sets rather than stock footage is a curious one, especially when it is discovered that a crew of Old World craftsmen was flown in especially from Switzerland to construct each model by hand out of thousands of matchsticks, which Jonrush paid for in Krugerands.Believe it or not, the writing is actually the least awful thing about SOB. After a while I started getting into the story and the relationships between the characters. Would Devin wrest control of Morehouse Conglomerated from Cynthia? Would that little twerp Winston get what was coming to him? So many questions, and so little wine to find the answers.Why doesn't anyone try to film romance novels anymore? Here you have the response to that query, in full color. Advisable for Jonrush completists only.

This show had such promise; promise to be a great stupid comedy, the first great stupid comedy. At first, it was working well. The Eric Jonrosh intros/outros were on the beat and the over the top funny or die style humor of the acting and plot points were eliciting real laughs.However, the ridiculousness of the frame story (not the Jonrosh bookends, but the Devon Morehouse framing) and overemphasized jokes soon wear on the nerves. By episode 3 I was no longer laughing. I stuck it out through all 6 episodes in the hope that it would improve, but beyond a chuckle here and there at jokes that somehow managed to be funny it never really did.The funny or die format may work for 3 minute shorts, but extended out into a 3 hour miniseries it becomes tedious.

Having watched 3 episodes already, I find myself anxious to see the next one. That doesn't happen very often in TV comedy, so they must be doing something right.Although the production could not be referred to as "subtle", there are a lot of little touches that you really need to look for. I find it best if I record the show so that I can go back and look at the little details, like changes in the background that might otherwise go un-noticed. It's sort of like the throwaways on "The Simpsons" where they pan through the house and you see skeletons in the walls - but you almost have to put the show into slo-mo to see these bits.Spoils is like a show with a really pathetic continuity person, so that a beer bottle in one scene gets replaced by a glass of scotch in the next, and then morphs into a bottle of Coke. IMDb should cut off the "Goofs" category for this show, as there are so many intentional errors in it.And I have suffered through melodramas like the one parodied here, which makes the satire just that much more biting. The comparisons to Police Squad and Airplane! are probably apt - I think that if you liked either of these, you'll enjoy Spoils.

If you have the IFC channel, you probably knew of this show for at least 3 months. Maybe more! I don't watch enough TV to know it all. But the way this show was advertised DID NOT match how this show really is - terrible.This show/miniseries/spoof/whatever it is or is supposed to be was so heavily promoted that it was treated like the greatest breakthrough in home entertainment. IFC still promotes it around the clock even though new episodes are only on Thursdays.The show has a ton of stars or ex-stars of movies and is basically this long drawn out story of love, war, and who knows what else.What really makes this show terrible is not the comedy. This is the type of comedy anyone with a brain would not like or find funny. The joke gets old quick and every scene is predictable. You basically know how the writer's will turn a scene into a spoof of other shows and movies.There are some scenes that are OK but overall I plan on watching this show only to see how bad it gets and to see how it ends. Hopefully it ends real soon because this is about as bad as it gets.