Some Old Review on Kill Bill

Before I had a blog, I planned on starting a blog and wrote this review of Kill Bill:

KILL BILL – This is the contentious movie of year for me. I read a scathing review of Kill Bill in the New Yorker two days before I saw it and was completely prepared to love the movie in spite of it. To me, Tarantino was 4 for 4, including True Romance, so I had every reason to have faith in the man. Further, I like (not love) kung fu movies and was excited about seeing this flick. So I head over to the Vista theatre with some college friends, ripe with the Pussymobile outside, get seats with lots of legroom and get ready to enjoy myself for two hours. Twenty minutes into the movie, I’m checking my watch. What the fuck happened to Tarantino’s fun dialog? By the time the male nurse was selling his friend sex with comatose Uma, he had lost me, and never really got me back. It was boring, the worst of all sins, and something I thought Tarantino incapable of…all my non-film school friends think the reason I didn’t enjoy is was some type of brainwashing that’s happened to me since going to school…perhaps. Or, I was in a weird mood watching it, or I saw it in a shitty theatre. But the odd thing is, most of my film school peers really enjoyed it, or at least gave it a thumbs up. And so did Roger Ebert, who is as much as anyone, pretty much on target about movies[okay, i've since changed my mind on this]. So why didn’t I like the movie? I don’t know, maybe I will see it again, but to tell the truth, I really don’t want to. I don’t want to spend my time or money on it. I’ll see the next installment, of course, and maybe try to revisit the whole thing then.

And I have issue with people who like Kill Bill and say things like, “It’s just amazing that a movie like that can get made.” Bullshit. Tarantino had carte blache to do whatever he wanted—and he had earned that right, like I said 4 for 4. Or people who say, “I just loved the production design and the camera work and the costumes and the choreographed violence, the stylishness.” Bullshit also. Anytime you start needing the break things down, means the picture didn’t work. I agree the production design was freaking awesome, but the mere fact that I noticed the production design above and beyond, say, the plot or the script, demonstrates to me a problem with the film. In all of his previous films, I had trouble isolating any element, because I loved them all so much.

The New Yorker did a great profile on Tarantino a few weeks after the scathing review. What the profile identified and I agree with, is that the appeal of Tarantino is not the irony that he gets associated with because of his acute awareness of movies and pop culture at large, but just the opposite, his earnestness. I go back to True Romance, and Clarence, the character that is clearly the most autobiographical for Tarantino. There’s a moment in the film when a guy is reading a magazine article about Elvis at a hamburger stand and Clarence, Elvis lover that he is, starts up a conversation with the guy. At first, his reaction is “this guys a creepy, weirdo, why is he talking to me?” But after a few moments, we are charmed, cause Clarence is so freaking genuine in his love for Elvis that it’s contagious. The guy lets down his guard and becomes engaged. This is the appeal of Tarantino, he clearly loves things: movies, hamburgers, Elvis, samauri swords, stylish violence, funky cars, black suits, just to name a few. But we are a defensive audience, an ironic audience, who needs to be reassured that this guy is not a creep. We need to be aware that Tarantino understands how WE see earnestness. So what he’s done in the past is pull us in with his cleverness, he shows us that he understands we are wary, that we are standoffish, but that this is all fun and games—THIS IS A MOVIE for godssake, lets have a ball, and then lets have the balls to give a shit about something.

For me, Kill Bill was simply boring, the dialog and the story were too weak and boring. For any regular director, the images may have been able to make up for the other missing elements, but not for Tarantino. 4 for 5 ain’t bad, I don’t know anyone with a better batting average, but now I’m wondering whether From Dusk Til Dawn should count….