It was our first sunny afternoon all week here in the Hub O' the Universe, so I did what any sane person would do--I went to the movies!
Because, having read about how Grindhouse is a terrible commercial failure, I knew it would probably be gone soon, and I really wanted to see it in its original form with both movies and all the trailers and such.
The movie starts auspiciously--with a trailer for a mythical movie called Machete! that I would totally go see tomorrow if it were real. And then we go into Planet Terror, which is everything you want a zombie movie with a woman sporting a machine gun leg to be. Blood, laffs, and a whole lot of severed testicles.Which is to say it rocked my socks off. And then we get some more trailers which were not as good as the Machete! trailer but still pretty funny and fun. (Ego alert--while the Machete! and Don't! trailers are anonymous, the trailers for Thanksgiving and Werewolf Women of the SS are credited to Eli Roth and Rob Zombie respectively. Like we care!)
And then, sadly, the whole ship founders on the rocks of Tarantino's Death Proof. I mean, I get that the whole project is kind of a goof, but Rodriguez actually made a movie, and Tarantino made two scenes and a bunch of crap. The movie opens strongly, with lots of banter between these three female friends, but then after an overlong buildup, Kurt Russell kills them all in graphic fashion. And then we meet another group of far less interesting friends, headed by real life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who is obviously a remarkable stuntwoman but turns in a Brett Favre-esque performance as an actor. (I think of Favre's failure to play himself convincingly in There's Something About Mary as a kind of benchmark of acting ineptitude). Long, long, dull movie-killing dialogue in a diner, and then a long, tedious bit about how Zoe wants to drive a Dodge Challenger. Ho freaking hum. At this point, I had been in the theater for about two and a half hours, and I was tempted to follow the lead of the two guys in front of me and just walk out. Because I had already seen a kick ass zombie movie and some funny trailers, and Death Proof had gotten so bad that it was clear that no ending was going to redeem it. And so it didn't. A really cool stunt chase follows, and then the gals take revenge on Kurt Russell, and may I add, ho-hum.
I think Tarantino may be suffering from an advanced case of Spike Lee Disease: make a decent movie and start believing you're a genius. And because you're a genius, you start cranking out crap like Girl 6, or you make the picture all squishy in Crooklyn and nobody says to you, "Aaagh! This sucks!" or, if they do, you don't believe them, because you're a genius.
So, I don't know if anybody else said this to you, but Quentin, Death Proof blooooooooowwwwws! You have actually succeeded in making a boring action movie! Nobody else is as thrilled with your long stretches of dialogue as you are! I didn't need five freaking minutes on the significance of the Dodge Challenger! You've got Kurt Russel lurking in the background of that scene and still couldn't sustain any menace or suspense. It's like the things that were always annoying about your work have gotten more annoying, and you're not good at the stuff you used to be good at anymore. Remember Four Rooms? Man, you killed me with the suspense in your segment! Now it's like you're so thrilled with your pop culture references that you forgot to put them in a halfway decent movie.
I have read that people think the movie is tanking because it's three hours long. Yeah, that's why those Lord of the Rings movies tanked too. Oh wait, no, those were huge hits. My theory is that enough people went on the first night and told people that only the first half of the movie is worth seeing to kill word of mouth. Now apparently Tarantino is recutting Death Proof so he can release a longer version on its own. Oh, Quentin. No. The problem is not that Death Proof is too short. The problem is that at an hour and twenty minutes, it already feels way too long.
Still, for all that, you'll probably never get another chance to see this whole Grindhouse thing in this form again, so I'm glad I went. Actually Planet Terror was worth the price of admission on its own
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