Director-writer Damien Chazelle, of "Whiplash" and "La La Land" fame, is at the point in his career where he can do what he wants, and apparently what he wants is to make a three-hour-plus film featuring a major star projectile vomiting and someone who's not a major star getting a shower of feces from a rogue, spooked elephant.

Of course, that's not all that his new drama-comedy, "Babylon" (opening Dec. 23), is about. It's meant to be a tribute to the free-spirited, roaring ’20s in Hollywood, a time before the Hays Code, which introduced a strict code of conduct into the industry and the films it produced. As documented in books such as Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon," the movie industry's early years sometimes were as much Sodom and Gomorrah as Hollywood and Vine, and that's the loud, raucous spirit that Chazelle tries to capture. It's the flip side of the breathless Hollywood romanticism of "La La Land."

But, even at their rowdiest, surely even Hollywood's most die-hard partiers must have taken a breather now and then, unlike Chazelle's garish, exhausting film that never takes it down a notch or only rarely gets behind the outrageous facade.

Nellie LaRoy (a very good Margot Robbie, who throws herself into the part, even when she's vomiting) is a young woman with big dreams of making it in Hollywood. She'll do anything to get there, even crash a swinging party where she might even meet Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the silent-movie era's biggest star, who seems to be not-so-happily-married to Ina (Olivia Wilde). Nellie befriends another dreamer and schemer, Manny Torres (Diego Calva, "Narcos"), who yearns to work behind the scenes in Hollywood as a power broker. That party scene, a bacchanalia of almost Roman proportions, sets the tone for the film, as the two of them will do just about anything to get ahead.

But there are serious issues lurking in the dark corners, away from the party lights. Set at a time when Hollywood was on the cusp of moving from silent to sound, there's a latent desperation in the air, especially with characters like Jack, who could see their careers slip away if they can't make the transition. Then there's the issue of race, which Chazelle touches on in the character of Sidney (Jovan Adepo, "The Leftovers"), a Black musician who finds himself forced to appear in blackface because the Hollywood-powers-that-be didn't think he was dark enough.

这里有一些强大的时刻,如果Chazelle could have found a way to plumb these emotions more effectively, "Babylon" would pack a much bigger punch. As it is, everyone feels like a one-dimensional cartoon character in a world where they lurch from one drug-and-alcohol outrage to the next. Want to see an underground circus-freak performer eat a rat? A woman urinating on a lover? A guy get his head stuck in a toilet? We got you.

Then Chazelle goes avant-garde at the end, with a tribute to cinema that seems stylistically at odds with the rest of the film and feels like an anvil dropped on the audience's head. Apparently, he really does love Hollywood and its sordid history, but if the previous three hours had been deeper and more modulated, he wouldn't have needed to hammer it home right before the credits roll.

But why opt for subtlety and insight when you can have upchuck and defecation?

UPDATED: The original review said this film takes place before Prohibition but it is concurrent with Prohibition.

cary.darling@houstonchronicle.com