In Bel Air, 1926, Manuel "Manny" Torres is organizing the haphazard transport of an elephant to a debauched bacchanal at the mansion of his employer, Kinoscope Studios boss Don Wallach.

Witnessing this event rife with sex, jazz, and cocaine, Manny becomes smitten with Nellie LaRoy, a brash, ambitious self-declared "star" from New Jersey.

He helps carry away young actress Jane Thornton, who overdosed on drugs with actor Orville Pickwick, having the elephant walk through to distract partygoers.

Nellie, shown to have an institutionalized mother, eggs on her drunken father (and inept business manager) Robert to fight a rattlesnake at a party; he passes out.

Comparatively light skinned Sidney is offended when studio executives insist he don blackface to assuage Southern audiences' aversion to seeing interracial orchestras; he leaves Kinoscope to perform live in black establishments.

He shows them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, then visits a nearby cinema alone to see Singin' in the Rain, whose depiction of the industry's transition from silents to talkies, albeit sanitized, moves him to tears.

Byrne, Damon Gupton, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Phoebe Tonkin, and Tobey Maguire (who is also an executive producer on the film) joined the cast.

While noting the similarities it shares with films such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), Bamboozled (2000), and Medicine for Melancholy (2008), Daniels focuses on character Manuel "Manny" Torres and his rise into the Hollywood studio system: "In the process, Manuel cuts off ties with his Mexican roots—though they live in Los Angeles, he never visits his family—he Americanizes his name to Manny, and at a party thrown by William Randolph Hearst, he presents himself as a Spaniard.

Manuel becomes intoxicated by his proximity to the white capitalistic greed that governs Hollywood (and partly the American dream of upward mobility), causing him to traverse a tenuous betweenness of identity."

Daniels writes that Manny's erasure of his identity is sparked by his fantasy romance with Nellie LaRoy—who represents what he loves about Hollywood: "An indefinable magical quality, upward mobility, picturesque happiness, and the ability to permanently define yourself."

[28] Lisa Laman of Collider observed that Babylon functions as a rumination on how human beings try to outrun and ignore their innate mortality, pointing to the various nonchalant depictions of death (such as a newscaster's casual account of the suicide of a female Jack Conrad fan) as an especially discernible example of this thematic element.

[34][35] The first red-banded trailer for Babylon premiered on September 12, 2022, at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival during a Q&A event with Chazelle and TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.

[36][37] Noting its uncensored nudity, profanity and drug use, several publications compared the trailer's atmosphere to that of films such as The Wolf of Wall Street and The Great Gatsby (both 2013), which star Robbie and Maguire, respectively.

[46] In the United States and Canada, Babylon was released alongside Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and was initially projected to gross $12–15 million from 3,342 theaters over its four-day opening weekend.

Deadline cited the general public's declining interest in prestige films, the threat of a tripledemic surge in COVID-19 and flu cases, and the nationwide impact of Winter Storm Elliott as reasons for lower-than-expected theater attendance.

"[55] THR's David Rooney described it as a "syncopated concentration of hedonistic revelry", praising the cast performances, score, cinematography, costume and production design, but criticizing the screenplay and direction—ultimately concluding "it’s hard to imagine the overstuffed yet insubstantial Babylon finding its way into many screen-classic montages".

[56] Conversely, Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood wrote that "it is guaranteed to be a movie that will stay in your head", commending the direction, production design, and performances.

[57] In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw assigned the film three stars out of five, applauding the performances of Robbie and Pitt for elevating "a story in no hurry to engage with the true-life nastiness of its era".

[58] Writing for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson concurred with Bradshaw's sentiment, stating: "These are little islands in a sea of mannered chaos, but it begins to feel, as Babylon stretches out across three hours and eight minutes, that Chazelle has no clear idea where all of this is going.

"[59] In a scathing review for Time, Stephanie Zacharek highlighted Jun Li's performance, but criticized Chazelle's screenplay and direction, summarizing: "Babylon is a manic sprawl that only pretends to celebrate cinema.

"[60] In his review for The Ringer, Adam Nayman described Babylon as "a nauseous, high-calorie sugar rush of a movie that not only wants to have its cake and eat it too, but also to puke it up, smear it around, and cram it in the viewer's face".

[61] Writing less enthusiastically about the film in Variety, Peter Debruge stated that "Babylon presents itself as the apotheosis of all that has come before, the ne plus ultra of the medium's own potential, and indeed, it's an experience that won't be easily topped, in this or any year.

[62] Richard Brody of The New Yorker praised Chazelle's storytelling and characters, but criticized other aspects of his screenplay, ultimately concluding: "Artistically, what Babylon adds to the classic Hollywood that it celebrates is sex and nudity, drugs and violence, a more diverse cast, and a batch of kitchen-sink chaos that replaces the whys and wherefores of coherent thought with the exhortation to buy a ticket, cast one's eyes up to the screen, and worship in the dark.

Author Stephen King praised the film, calling it "utterly brilliant–extravagant, over the top, hilarious, thought-provoking" and "one of those movies that reviews badly and is acclaimed as a classic in 20 years.