Hey, who wants to see Nicole Kidman fake an orgasm?
Hey, who wants to see Nicole Kidman fake a half a dozen orgasms?
That’s what you’ll get from the very first scene of “Babygirl” (yes, one word), a movie cut from the same humiliation-porn cloth as “Fifty Shades of Grey” — and just as uncomfortable to watch.
Kidman plays Romy, the high-powered CEO of a tech company, the cliched character who has to announce that family is the most important thing to her, even though we see no evidence of that at all. Tightly wound and always in control, Romy is frustrated by her unsatisfactory sex life with Jacob (Antonio Banderas), to whom she’s been married for 19 years. She becomes fascinated with Samuel (Harris Dickinson), an intern who has just joined the firm and, despite the risk to her career and position, begins an affair with him.
Romy gets turned on by having Samuel tell her what to do in the bedroom. In addition to stripping her clothes off while he watches, she ends up on all fours, crawling over to take a treat out of his hand and later lap milk from a saucer.
Watching these antics, I never felt sorry for Romy. I felt sorry for Nicole Kidman and wondered why she agreed to appear in a movie like this, with several scenes of full nudity. I know she did similar supposedly erotic sequences in “Eyes Wide Shut,” but I blame her then-husband Tom Cruise for that (some sort of Scientology trance?).
Perhaps Kidman wanted to show off how well she’s kept in shape — and there’s no denying that, at age 57, she looks great — but frankly, current husband Keith Urban should be the only one who knows that.
“Babygirl” writer/director Halina Reijn not only created an unoriginal and insufferable story, but filled it with insipid dialogue and the least arousing sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. Worse, the plot is so predictable I could have told you everything that would happen even if I had walked out of the theater after a half hour.
Unfortunately, I didn’t, but perhaps my review will save you from wasting two hours of your life on this dreck.
I give “Babygirl” a 2 out of 10, which will probably put it on my Worst Movies Of The Year list later this week. Opens in theaters on Christmas day.