The Spoils Of Babylon

If all you know of IFC’s upcoming The Spoils Of Babylon is that it stars Kristen Wiig and Tobey Maguire as siblings who want to bang, well, this trailer doesn’t tell you much more beyond that. What it will tell you is that the six-episode spoof of epic miniseries like The Thorn Birds—from the writer and director of Casa De Mi Padre and that movie’s star, Will Ferrell, who will introduce each episode—takes a similar tack as Casa by playing its melodrama straight, with the belief that its excessiveness is absurdity enough. That, plus the various funny wigs worn by Maguire over the decades, as he suffers through a life plagued by drink, drugs, and terrible green-screens, hoping to overcome his incestuous longing for Wigg as they run the oil company they inherit from their father. Tim Robbins plays said patriarch, part of a starry cast—includes Val Kilmer, Jessica Alba, and Haley Joel Osment—whose participation here is one of the least weird things about it.