I saw Babel this weekend. As some critics are saying, it's the Crash of 2006. You know, so many story lines, so little time, no matter how long the stretch out the running time. That's not to say Babel is bad. Babel is great. My only complaint is... well, it's kind of two-fold, or a one-or-the-other proposition. Either they should have extended the running time to three hours, or they should have cut two of the stories.

I mean, I get it, we're all connected. That's great. It's nice to know that my actions will somehow effect some untouchable in India (nothing like that happened in the movie, but you get the point). Anyway, the story is pretty basic: Two Morrocan boys fire a rifle into the air, hit an American woman on a tour bus, causing an international incident. Meanwhile, the Americans' young kids are heading to Mexico with their nanny to see the nanny's son get married. And in Japan, a deaf-mute teen girl is acting out against her father. That connection isn't as clear at first until we see a badly photoshopped photograph of the deaf-mute's father on a hunting trip in Morroco. I say it's badly photoshopped because it is, though it's not supposed to be. It's not a clue in a mystery, it's just bad production values, which was rather surprising to me.

Anyway, I'm picking on Babel a little here, because it got the Oscar nod over Children of Men, which is a superior movie in my mind. However, that's like saying something that scored a 10 is superior to something that got a 9.85. While true, it's not much of a difference.

Oh, and the other thing I wasn't too keen on in Babel was how quickly they cut from one scene to the other. Just when things got interesting, they would cut from one scene to the next. Just when I'm getting into the scene, or I feel like I'm learning something about the character, we're off to another part of the world. And that's why I think it either needed a longer running time, or it needed to kill two of the stories. I knew I'd get around to writing that eventually.

See, the pace was excellent, because Babel is a pretty long movie to begin with. And it moves fast. And toward the end, we do stick around with the characters. But still.

Nevertheless, go see this in a theater. It's worth your money.

And again, 2006 was a great year for Mexican filmmakers.