Borderlands

Sort of a generic "Guardians of the Galaxy" knockoff, except set in a wasteland and without any soul, humor or imagination.

I used to game a lot but never got around to “Borderlands,” a series of shooter-looter video games set in a wasteland full of mutants, ancient tech and colorful denizens that seemed like a pretty brazen knockoff the “Fallout” world — also recently made into a show on Amazon Prime Video.

The movie version of “Borderlands,” directed and co-written by horror-meister Eli Roth, boasts some big-name stars including Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Cate Blanchett, the latter two both Oscar winners. You may wonder what they’re doing in a neon-colored sci-fi/action flick, but personally I like it when prestige thespians go gleefully slumming in schlock.

Problem is, this schlock don’t rock. Heck, it barely even bounces.

The movie we wind up with is a sort of a generic "Guardians of the Galaxy" knockoff, except set in a wasteland and without any soul, humor or imagination.

Blanchett and Hart are the co-leads of a team of misfits and outlaws thrown together on the planet of Pandora. At first they fight each other, then band up to take on the real baddie, a corporate overlord type named Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) who looks like he wandered in from another flick.

It seems most people on the planet are in some way seeking access to the Vault, a fabled repository hidden somewhere on Pandora that contains all the valuable secrets of an ancient, now dead race of superior beings. The mythology comes complete with whispering of a coming messiah who will unlock the Vault and finally bring peace to the planet.

(Which everyone could achieve immediately without Pandora Jesus if they would just stop fighting each other and forget about the Vault. But then we wouldn’t have a movie.)

Blanchett is Lilith, a churlish, crimson-haired bounty hunter who used to be a native of Pandora, but made her way off years ago and has no desire to return. There’s a funny scene — the only one in the film, really — where she first encounters Atlas’ thugs trying to strong-arm her into the job, and she just casually shoots them right as they start to wind up into a big exposition dialogue. Very ‘Han shot first’ vibes. Eventually she gives in, lured by a huge pile of cash.

Atlas says his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), was abducted by one of his top mercenaries, Roland (Hart) and is hidden somewhere on Pandora. But it seems his plans are more nefarious, and he thinks Tina is somehow the key to finding and opening the Vault.

Upon landing on Pandora, Lilith soon encounters Claptrap, an annoying, one-eyed and one-wheeled robot voiced by Jack Black. He claims he was put into a slumber 36 years ago and awoken specifically to help her, which seems kinda convenient. Claptrap has a few robot skills in the R2-D2 mold as well as providing nonstop chatter and attempts at comic relief.

Also in the crew is Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a pretty standard-issue well-muscled ground-pounder. He wears a hockey mask and tubular breathing apparatus of dubious utility, is very dim but loyal to Tina and Roland. While the movie was borrowing from “Fallout” and “Guardians,” they decided to throw in much of Immortan Joe’s sidekicks from the Mad Max world. It seems there’s entire reams of scavengers similar to Krieg, whom he nonetheless helps mow down with the rest of the team.

Later on we’ll meet Tannis (Curtis), a science-y type who has a connection to Lilith and her mother from back in the day.

The group rolls through 100 minutes of pretty typical action centerpieces, assisted by CGI and plenty of explosions — the favorite ploy of Tina, who dresses like a Japanese gamer gurl, including rabbit ears and for some reason a nasal breathing strip. Roland and Lilith fire guns with endless bullets, and Krieg has a big ol’ axe-like thing for chopping bodies into parts.

Despite all the mayhem, there’s a complete dearth of blood, rendering the action scenes strangely antiseptic. None of the actors are given the chance to evoke more than one or two traits in their characters, so we never feel any deep — or even shallow — connection to them.

I’ve had more empathy for some of my video game avatars.

It used to be accepted fact that no decent movies can ever be made from video games, but we’ve actually seen a few in recent years. “Borderlands” ain’t one of them, and in fact ranks closer to the bottom than the top. If it feels like a pastiche of elements lifted from games and movies and thrown together without any sort of rhyme or reason, that’s because it is.